Believe It or Not, UX Design Is a 6000-Year-Old Skill

What do Walt Disney, Leonardo Da Vinci, or Apple have in common? UX is behind some of their best creations

UX, short for user experience, is one of the hottest fields in digital design. The exact definition of what it is will vary widely depending on who you ask, but a good way to sum it up is that UX is the process of designing a product or service that resonates with the user and their needs.

Designer Ethan Parry (@ethanparry) has worked with major brands such as Meliá Hotels International, SEAT, and Dunia in this field. He has also led workshops for businesses such as KPMG, Accenture, El Corte Inglés, and Hola Magazine, so it is safe to say he is a real UX expert.

Origins

"When I first heard the term, I thought that it was a fairly new concept, that maybe it had been coined a couple of years earlier or, at most, a decade ago," he explains, but he figured out that the origins of UX go much farther back. "As I grew as a professional in this field, I realized that it dates as far back as 4000 B.C.!"

Ethan sees some of the principles that drive today's UX philosophy in the ancient art of Feng Shui, a way to arrange different objects–mainly furniture–in relation to the flow of energy. One of the goals of Feng Shui is to make it easy to navigate throughout space, and, in that sense, it shares some of the principles modern designers apply when considering UX. They may not be arranging furniture, but the objective is to create a certain "flow" in the experience that benefits the user.

Da Vinci was a designer

Once you look at it from that perspective, many historical precedents could be considered some form of UX.

For example, in 1430, Leonardo Da Vinci was commissioned by the Duke of Milan to design a kitchen for a high-profile feast. Da Vinci thought about the experience chefs go through when preparing the meals and designed a conveyor belt system to make the work simpler. It didn't quite work as planned, but the intention was there.

What DaVinci wanted was to make the experience as seamless as possible, the same way modern designers tweak an app or a service to make sure users make the most of it, and what they need is always at hand.

Happiest Place on Earth

Much closer to the present, in the 1960s, Walt Disney had this vision of families coming together and having fun in his parks. He meticulously designed an experience that made visitors really feel like they were in the happiest place on earth, and that continues to amaze people of all ages to this day. "There's a precision to detail that blows my mind," says Ethan.

UX today

But the first person to speak about UX in the way we now consider it was Don Norman in 1995. He was Apple's User Experience Architect and wrote a book titled The Design of Everyday Things, where he made a case for not thinking about design just in aesthetic terms, but also the functionality or usability.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Apple has given us another of the clearest examples of what a good UX is. In 2007 the company launched the iPhone, a phone like no other. Although there were other smartphones at that time, Apple reimagined how these devices should work and quickly become the modern standard for usability.

If you want to learn more about UX designs and how to create digital experiences that resonate with your users from scratch, Ethan Parry's course Introduction to UX Design will teach you the research, methodology, and overall UX strategy that accompanies UX design, which is just as important as the design itself.

You may also like:

- The UX Trends to Look Out for in 2020
- 5 Fantastic Books for Those Starting Out in U
- Dos and Don'ts of UX Design