[drewcoo]

Present day UX grew out of Englebart and co's notions of computer interfaces for children. They were meant to be discoverable. They weren't meant to avoid thinking. That's still the guiding spirit in it.

One could argue that children are "barbaric," but I really don't think it's useful framing.

[masswerk]

Alan Kay's work is very much about children, but Engelbart's project was about (qualified) grownups and future civilization. (Children at the age of about 10-12 were especially interesting to Alan Kay, because they're at in a transitional state from visual dominance to symbolic dominance in thinking, following the work of Piaget and in the updated version by Jerome Brunner.) Regarding, what is discoverable, the civilizing aspect may be well in what is shown and in what way. E.g., Licklider's examples are actually conversations about constraints, without verbalising constraints specifically.

Edit: One notable "relict" of Engelbart's project is the outline view in MS Word (which, out of context, may not appear to be that remarkable, while it was much about how texts should be organized and understood).

[masswerk]

*) Jerome Bruner (just one "n")

Wile Piaget thought that the newly established dominance would replace the previous one, Bruner showed that the older one remained and could be observed in parallel. (Which is rather decisive to Alan Kay's work.)