Design is arguably *the* defining human endeavor that separates us from all other species. Take a look around you right now and you'll notice that *everything* has been designed – from how you sleep to how you eat and to how you communicate; everything around you has been designed by someone. In other words, user experience design, or UX design, is *everywhere* – from how you interact with your smartphone to how your home is designed. Of course, not all experiences are *well designed*. And that's why UX design is such an incredibly exciting and rewarding field to be in.
We can trace UX design all the way back to the ancient Romans. They developed theories of aesthetics to construct amazing buildings that have stood the test of time. Vitruvius, a renowned Roman architect who wrote the first-ever book on architecture, asserted that good design must have the qualities of *durability*, *usefulness* and *aesthetics*. These qualities are *as* important to UX design today as they were millennia ago.
From the early 1970s to '80s, UX design was known as "human-computer interaction", or *HCI*. HCI rose to prominence just as personal computers became mainstream, and that was not a coincidence. You see, before the 1970s computers were just large machines that were operated by punching lines of code. So, for most people, computers were really, really hard to use. But in the 1970s, Xerox PARC introduced the first personal computer. And it was not only small, but it utilized the first *graphical user interface*.
Instead of lines of code, you used Windows icons and a mouse. And it started a revolution! Soon, companies like Apple and Microsoft were heavily borrowing from the Alto to create their own personal computers. This explosion of personal computing in the 1970s and 1980s led people to ask questions like "How should people interact with computers?" and "How can we make that interaction as intuitive as when we interact with other humans?". As people started finding the answers to these questions, the field of human-computer interaction, or HCI, started to grow.
Originally, HCI practitioners were mostly from fields such as cognitive psychology and computer science, and they were mostly focused on the concept of *usability*: how to make computers as intuitive as possible. As the field of HCI grew, designers quickly realized that designing intuitive computers required a greater understanding of other fields such as *motion graphics*, *storytelling* and *linguistics*. UX design today is really just a continuation of what was called *HCI* in the 1980s
and *interaction design* in the 1990s. Today, we're dealing with a whole new set of products and services, the smartphone, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. But the questions we are asking as UX designers are *exactly the same*. It's still about "How can we make the experience of interacting with a computer, a smartphone, a product, a service as *intuitive*, *smooth* and *pleasant* as possible?".
Don Norman, the prominent designer who coined the term "user experience", once said that *design is everything*. What he meant was that UX designers are not only concerned with the product *when* it is being used but also *before* the product has been purchased and *after* it has been used. Let's think about the smartphone, for example. As UX designers, we care not only about making the software easy to use;
we also care about *designing the right marketing campaign*, about *creating a great unboxing experience*, as well as *making troubleshooting as painless as possible*. Of course, on top of that, we need to make sure that the product or service that you're offering actually addresses the need of the user in the first place. If not, you'll just be designing in a vacuum and no one will care how smooth or pleasant the experience is.
This is why UX design has become such a huge umbrella term which encompasses many fields, including *visual design*, *usability*, *psychology*, *sociology* and *aesthetics*. If you're interested in the *questions* that UX designers ask and if you're excited about finding the *answers*, then we have some very good news for you! The first piece of good news is that because UX design is such a multidisciplinary field, the barriers of entry are very low. It doesn't matter where you come from or what you majored in;
you'll always have something relevant to bring to the field of UX design. All you need is a constant drive for absorbing new knowledge and constantly improving yourself. The second piece of good news is that it's extremely challenging and rewarding to be a UX designer. There's an endless depth to the job, and you'll always be coming up with new possibilities and new solutions. And, finally, the great news is that you can start *right now*! You can start learning UX design *today*. At the Interaction Design Foundation, because we're a non-profit
we're able to deliver online UX courses at an extremely high quality and at a surprisingly low price. You can also pick up a few books at your library, or you can read some articles online. The point is you can take action right now. You can start learning UX design, and then you can make the world into a better design place than when you found it.