To answer this question in general, it is the development and menstruation of the industry that caused the transition from web design to UX design. But let’s get further specific and analyze some of the details that led to this transition.

 

Firstly, define web design and UX design. In my understanding of web design, this is a design process that is closely related to UI design, which focuses more on the visual parts of a webpage. While UX design is about the whole process of the user using the product. UX design requires a lot more consideration than just web design. UX design is about the whole process of the user using the product. UX design requires a lot more consideration than just web design.

 

As the design industry develops, people’s needs for product design become more and more detailed, and consequently the breakdown of the design process becomes more and more specific. UX design and web design are related, but they play different roles in the design process.

 

UX design is about the whole process of the user using the product. UX design requires a lot more consideration than just web design.

 

Web design was born much earlier than UX design. Web design came into existence with the birth of the web. It was back in the early 1990s. During this period, the internet became popular and people gradually realized that they needed a better way to present and view information. Web design was also created to optimize the experience of people using websites. It is therefore inseparable from what we now call ux design. At that time, however, most of the devices that people used were computers, cell phones and other electronic devices were not yet available and popular. The term of ux design was first coined by the cognitive psychologist and designer Don Norman when he worked at Apple Computer in 1993. So we can say that the field of UX design predates the emergence of the term itself.

 

Nowadays, when we talk about UX design, it mostly refers to the overall experience of the user about using the product. This includes not only UI design but also very important preliminary research, understanding of user needs, product goals and user pain points. It also requires the use of different design tools to make the design goals clear. These include wireframing, information architecture, and prototyping. after some prototyping is done, user testing is conducted to ensure the usability of the design.

 

Overall, as the design industry has evolved, design has become more and more segmented and detailed. The need for more specific detail in the product is driving the design industry. The advancement of hardware and the diversification of electronic products have also pushed the design of products to become more broad rather than limited to the web, and design has gradually become more user-centered, with designers taking business goals as a lighthouse, and making the entire user journey the goal of design. When it comes to design teams, UX design is also working with more roles, while web design focuses more on visual parts.

Citation

World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience. “A 100-Year View of User Experience (by Jakob Nielsen).” Nielsen Norman Group, www.nngroup.com/articles/100-years-ux/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023. 

Vieira, Tania. “A Brief History of UX Design and Its Evolution.” TNW | Syndication, 23 Jan. 2020, thenextweb.com/news/a-brief-history-of-ux-design-and-its-evolution#:~:text=The%20term%20was%20first%20coined,crucial%20to%20understanding%20this%20field. 

My answer is No, the use of design systems and interaction design patterns will not stifle creativity in interaction design.

 

Design system is a comprehensive library of design style guidelines, design standards, components and design tools that are used in a work to ensure its consistency. Design system helps to maintain a unified design style and consistent quality in different parts of a product or project. Interaction design patterns, like design systems, are a set of design solutions that ensure design consistency and quality. These patterns are proven to be the best standard and feasible solutions for some general interactions. Design systems and interaction design patterns all serve as a guideline and templates in the development of a consistent and standardized design.

 

Design systems are a collection of historically proven and effective design resources. The design system contains the core concepts and guiding principles of this design. This is the part of the design process that designers should constantly remind themselves that all design should revolve around core concepts and principles. The design system seems to contain only some seemingly small elements such as color guidelines, icons, cards, buttons, typography, components, etc., but in fact, they are combined to tell the core concept and design principles of the design. The design system is the smallest unit that can reflect the design concept, and it is the most basic and indispensable part of the design. While design patterns help make the experience more fluid and uniform. Consistent design language will reduce the learning cost of users so that users can encounter familiar buttons or interaction patterns in different scenarios.

 

Design systems and design patterns can improve design efficiency well, designers can reuse and refer to existing design resources, and do not have to build the design from 0 when doing every interface or product. This also allows designers from different departments involved in the design to maintain a unified output, maintain the look and feel of the product, and maintain and promote a unified user experience.

 

Using design systems and patterns is like using a dictionary to learn a new language. When designers have reference materials, they are better able to focus on the design itself, rather than some fragmented design details. The details are important, But the use of design systems and design patterns will take good care of details in design, which will allow designers to focus more on advancing the functionality of the product or the smoothness of the user experience. Here is where the creative parts should take place.

 

I think the presence of design systems and design patterns in the design process is like the bricks in Lego. The design process is like creating a new Lego piece, which requires the construction of the foundation bricks. creativity is required, and the design also depends on the unity of the basic design language. Innovation in design only makes sense when the work has a unified, fluid infrastructure. Design systems and design patterns provide a structured and efficient framework. However, designers also need to have flexibility and adaptability when designing, and design systems and design patterns are worth updating and iterating when necessary. These two valuable tools should be used as design helpers, not rigid rules that limit creativity.

 

In the highly modernized and urbanized present, most of the technology in our lives are influenced by government and policy. In the world of emerging technologies, many of them are born with the support of the government and other departments.

 

For example, the Internet, which we now use extensively and even depend on for our survival, was originally created with the financial support of the U.S. Department of Defense. The predecessor of the Internet was ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a project initiated by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now known as DARPA) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The project was designed to create a stable and secure communications network. The concept was first proposed by J.C.R. Licklider in the early 1960s and further developed into the ARPANET project, headed by Lawrence Roberts.The design of ARPANET drew on the concept of packet switching, a technology that breaks up data into smaller pieces and sends them out in separate packets. This allowed the network to transmit data more efficiently and improved its reliability. Speaking of this we can not skip the TCP/IP protocol, which was developed by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn in order to better manage and connect ARPANET’s growing number of nodes, and which became the foundation protocol for the Internet. In 1983, ARPANET moved to the TCP/IP protocol, marking the official birth of the Internet.

 

The development of ARPANET is a good example to show us that government-funded technology projects will have more stable financial support and the research and development process will proceed more smoothly. It demonstrates that government-supported technological innovations are usually more able to take the high risk and high reward. When these innovations are successful, the country and its people will also be the first beneficiaries. Yet government investment can also have some drawbacks. For example, there is more government control and regulation in implementing the innovation. Government investment also often influences the market and the industry, and the funding of some projects may lead to an uneven distribution of resources.

 

However, the creation of new and emerging technologies is not something that can be achieved by one person or one department or one organization alone. It is usually the result of a collaborative effort. I believe that the promotion of a technology cannot be achieved without the support of the Government. It is indeed the government’s responsibility to promote new technologies, so that people can live a better life and the country can develop better. But corporations and open sources ventures are the main forces where technological innovation takes place. The government, on the other hand, should be more capable of identifying and discovering promising technologies and providing timely support and funding.

In her article From Plans and Situated Actions, Lucy Suchman argues that the development of advanced technologies and the design of useful tools should be based on real-world contexts, user needs, and the interaction between technology and society. In this navigation Lucy emphasizes the importance which changes people’s understanding of the applicability of technology through a number of examples and ideas.

 

One of the interesting things is that in the opening she mentions the different navigation strategies of Europeans and Trukese. Europeans tend to make plans while the Trukese prefer to trust their intuition and react to the environment once they have set a destination. This example is a very good representation of the relationship between purpose and action in different cultures. It occurs to me that most real-life decisions are similar to but far more complex than, navigating the open sea. We are often overwhelmed with more variable external factors and environments, all of which have a great impact on our individual cognitive science. Lucy makes people understand that design should not only be about idealized plans but also focus on the current environment and actual situation. This is the same concept of user-centered design that we are now learning and advocating. Lucy emphasized such a viewpoint in her article back in 1987.

 

Lucy also describes how the design and use of computers is influenced by social and cultural factors. She mentions a case study of the development of computer systems. In traditional workplaces, computer systems are often viewed as neutral tools that are designed based on strict and idealized plans and rules. However, Lucy points out that the situation in actual workplaces is often more complex. Staff members may customize computer systems to fit their workflow based on the actual situation and needs. This customization makes the computer system more of an “artifact” than a tool that performs according to a strict plan. 

 

These examples emphasize Lucy’s central point that the design and use of technology must be more sensitive to real-world contexts and user needs. She argues that technology should be adapted to human needs, rather than being forced to adapt to technology. This idea is widely used in modern user-centered design approaches, which emphasize collaboration and feedback with users to ensure that technological systems will be successful in real-world use.

Through my research on these two significant theories in interaction design history, I really felt the process of design development which made designing what we are today. 

 

In my study of interaction design in recent years and up to the present day, these design theories seem to be well understood. But I didn’t really know much about the history and story behind them. I just know these terms and will take these aspects into consideration when doing UI design. It was very interesting to learn the story behind the development of these theories, and the process of how these great people discovered and eventually developed these theories helped me to better understand them.

 

The Gestalt principle comes from Gestalt psychology. The original meaning of Gestalt is the German word for shape. It was originally proposed by German psychologist Max Wertheimer in 1912 and was improved later by Wolfgang Köhler (1929), Kurt Koffka (1935), and Wolfgang Metzger (1936). After observing what Max called the phi phenomenon while watching alternating lights on a railway signal. It was originally about the human visual hallucination that when seeing some static object moving at a high altitude, the person’s visual hallucination would interpret that it was continuous dynamic motion. The brain imagines that it is “continuous”. This discovery was further developed into the way humans receive visual information. These include Similarity, Proximity, Closure and Continuity, which are now what we call Gestalt principles.

 

fitt’s law is a mathematical model that is a formula describes the relationship between human movement time in a point-and-click task and the size and distance of the target. According to his formula, ID is positively correlated with the distance of the target (D); ID is negatively correlated with the width of the target (W). The farther the distance to the target, the more difficult the task, and the more time and precision the user needs to select the target; the wider the width of the target, the less difficult the task, and the wider target makes it easier for the user to select the target accurately.

 

Both theories are very important foundations in design. Through this study, I realized that I should consider these two aspects more in my future visual design to make my product experience better. The design style should follow the gestalt principles so that the language of design is unified and the related elements should be consistent in appearance. The related buttons or icons should be placed in a group, and their sizes and distances should be arranged properly according to Fitt’s law. Then add some continuous colors or lines to the interface to suggest to the user that there is a connection. The more I understand these theories, the easier and more seamlessly I can apply these theories to my design.

It is an undoubted truth that Ada Lovelace and Lillian Gilbreth both had an important impact on interaction design history. However, they contributed to different fields and levels of understanding interaction design.

 

Ada Lovelace was a mathematician and writer, known for her contributions to the Analytical Engine. She is an important figure in the history of computers. Even though the Analytical Engine was never built, her advanced understanding and interpretation of this engine led to the development of computer science. She first recognized the potential of this engine beyond doing math but ‘can do whatever we know how to order it to perform.’ This term overlapped with the concept of interaction design. In my understanding, interaction design, broadly defined, is a discipline that explores the ways in which people and artifacts interact with each other. As early as in the 1800s Ada made such advanced conjectures in her interpretation and extended notes of Luigi Menabrea’s article about the Analytical Engine. Thanks to Ada, now we can make engines do more than what we know how to do by creating innovations in interaction design. After all, interaction design is basically based on computers. But without Ada Lovelace, there would be no computers, computer science, and the following technologies. This is what I believe the most important and initial connection between Ada Lovelace and interaction design history.

 

While Ada Lovelace contributed more to the development of technology and hardware, Lillian Gilbreth made advances in the humanities for the history of interaction design and even more so for the history of design. Lilian is more considered an engineer and psychologist. She and her husband spent their life improving efficiency and productivity in the areas of motion study and human factors. These concepts have greatly influenced design thinking nowadays. In interaction design, we take human-centered design as one of the primary principles. The origin of this idea might have come from The Gilbreths. They used motion-picture to do the Time and Motion Studies, which developed into a theory of designing workspaces and tools to accommodate the physical capabilities and limitations of people. I believe this also impacted some design technologies such as Desktop Metaphor and Graphical User Interface. 

 

Ada Lovelace and Lillian Gilbreth’s contributions to computer science, industrial and human factors engineering have had a lasting impact on various industries including interaction design. Without them, interaction design would not have been developed to such a level. They not only inspired me as a pioneer in the design world but also as powerful women who made a difference in the world.