Tesler's work was already on the HCI (human-computer interaction) syllabus in 1988. So only 6 years after that work at Apple it was already considered exemplary

Tesler's work was already on the HCI (human-computer interaction) syllabus in 1988. So only 6 years after that work at Apple it was already considered exemplary research and taught to undergrads. I remember we did stuff on Ivan Sutherland, David Canfield, Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay and so may others, but that course actually had a profound impact on me because the lecturer had a way of getting into the psychology and philosophy - if you think about it most UI advances are _technologically_ unremarkable. I think what the OP article is talking about we called "Structured Observation" and there was something like "mind state" analysis. I visited the HCI lab at Imperial where they had the one way mirror and talk-back microphones, like a recording studio but set up for recording computer user behaviours. What this accords with in psychological language is mentalisation and intersubjectivity. In other words "getting inside th user's head and feeling and thinking what they are feeling and thinking". Early HCI people spent a lot of time in that zone. An important _negative_ shift is that we now use telemetry and logging, because today (as another comment says "who can be bothered?") we are interested in what is happening from the _application's_ viewpoint, not the user's. That is a subtle but massive change of priority. Look at those videos of early HCI today and you will be amazed at the intensity of engagement and excitement. Using a computer was like driving a car. Structured observation on users today would show very long periods of zombie like behaviour, one finger twitching, dribbling, eyes half closed and body almost motionless, neck bent over a phone screen. Then occasional outbursts of high expressed emotion, almost existential angst, throwing the device on the floor and crying, calling the developers "Nazis" and "Monsters". Then back to long period of passive dribbling and swiping. Some quote by Englebart I remember was that we must amplify humankind's intellect to cope with the raid changes and challenges of the world. But in shifting our concern from the users to the manufacturers, sellers and profiteers of technology we have betrayed that mission. In a similar way that changing the "personnel department" to "human resources" shifted the focus of practically all industry, the move from human-computer interaction to user experience (UX) has effected an equally imperceptible but devastating outcome upon technology. We live in a time where the computer user is the _target_ (to have "experiences" imposed upon) not an active component of a system with greater ends.