Interactive design has many different names and acronymns, Human Computer Interface (HCI), User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Interaction Design (IxD) and many more. It also has a relatively short history and spans many disciplines ranging from sociology, ethnographic research, psychology, computer science, engineering, graphic design and industrial design. This page contains links to resources that cover some of the basic history of the field and historic research that is relevant.
Bill Buxton has created a page that covers the history of MIT’s Lincoln Labs, one of the earliest and most influential groups that shaped concepts developed in Interactive Computing.
Bill Moggridge, a founder of IDEO and the currently the Director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, has written a book that covers much of the history of interactive design, Designing Interactions and the companion web site includes interviews with many of the pioneers in the field.
One of the earliest examples of the use of an “envisionment” video, created by Bob Spence and Mark Apperley, is the 1980 video The Office of the Professional.
A similar kind of video made in 1987, The Knowledge Navigator by Apple had unintended consequences. It is still amazing for what it predicted years before the inter-web as we know it existed:
