[kleiba2]

Reading this makes me feel like we have not learned any lessons at all in software engineering and UI design since the 1980s.

[acheron]

There were lots of very in-depth UI studies in the 90s, which were implemented in the second half of the 90s and early 00s. Then someone let “designers” in the door and it was all thrown out.

[jandrese]

While it started beforehand, it was really smartphones and especially the iPhone that gave so many UI guys an excuse to discard all of the studies of the past and start from scratch. "Oh, but it's a touch interface, these lessons are about mouse users, certainly discoverability and clearly differentiating UI elements don't apply anymore. Our users are so smart they will just know that a half swipe from the middle of the object is different than a half swipe from the edge, and they don't have to be told about functionality that is infused at birth now."

[kleiba2]

Yes. It was around the time when "UI design" changed to "UX design".

[bux93]

IBM CUA (1987) should be required reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access

[Someone]

Maybe, but I’ve searched for it many times out of curiosity, but have never managed to locate it online, and wouldn’t know if paper copies exist.

From Wikipedia, I get to https://web.archive.org/web/20010204033600/http://publib.bou...

That has one live link: https://web.archive.org/web/20010107084700/http://publib.bou..., but from there, the trail runs dead.

Do you have a link?

[kleiba2]

This one maybe? https://archive.org/details/ibm-saa-cua-basic-interface-desi...

PDF link in the box on the right.

[Someone]

Thanks! No pictures and way uglier than Apple’s HIG book, but much more than I ever found.

[sixsell1]

pdf contains plenty of labels "PICTURE 73 HERE" but not pictures. That's pretty important for a book about UI...

[benji-york]

This appears to be a successor document: https://archive.org/details/common-user-access-basic-interfa...