If you want to learn useful Human-Machine Interfaces, look at old tech, even imaginary tech in old sci-fi. Why? Because almost as quickly as we started impleme

If you want to learn useful Human-Machine Interfaces, look at old tech, even imaginary tech in old sci-fi. Why? Because almost as quickly as we started implementing UI/UX, we started running telemetry on them. At first we did a lot of user workshops. Later we got much more sophisticated. The problem is that people use interfaces to solve problems they have, perform work they need to do, and to otherwise help them and others reach common goals. When the character "Mr. Sulu" on the ancient Star Trek TOS has that little viewer thing come up, it's apparent to both the audience and the other fictional characters in that universe what Sulu is doing and why. Perhaps a few lines later one of the other characters in that universe might comment on Sulu's goals, after all, they all can both observe him and how he's solving a problem. Sulu is as much a UI for the crew as that cool little scope is. The focus is on goals, plot movement. Why is that important? Because all of that watching people and collecting data is not able to understand any of that. Instead, all we can really tell is whether or not a set of user interface tools are used a lot or not, and if so, how they're used. We've got a lot of "how" but no "why" So we optimize around getting people to use the tools more. After all, that's all we've got. UI/UX tools become much more about working the human than they are about the human working the tool. Windows 95 is very close to the inflection point of this story. We knew just enough to make things cooler and cooler, yet there was an overarching concern that computers do something useful. If you watch old commercials for tech, the emphasis is all about how useful it is: it teaches your kids, it predicts the stock market, and so on. Steve Jobs realized that while that remains a wonderful rationale, it was all bullshit as far as making and selling hardware. So he began emphasizing the coolness and disruptive nature of the UI. Buy it because it's freaking cool as hell and looks like the best video game you've ever seen. If anybody gives you a hard time, fall back to the old "But I've got a worldwide information system in my pocket" stuff. It has the benefit of being true without being especially relevant. I miss the pinball game.