Hands-on UX history workshop: use and critique pioneering interfaces

Hands-on experience:

• A Macintosh with 1-bit black and white interface
• System 1, System 3
• Original mouse, transparent shell mouse
• Original Macintosh manual
• MacPaint manual by Susan Kare

Examples of what we'll explore:

• The UX inventions by Bill Atkison and Jeff Raskin that we still use today
• From Engelbart to Xerox to Apple, invention, innovation and the trap of local maximum
• The three major UX contributions of the drop-down menu
• The two icons that have survived in Photoshop since 1984
• The two design lessons from the Macintosh mouse that still apply today and how the Macintosh mouse designers created the leap from experimental, unreliable, and very expensive ($500) mice from Xerox labs to a reliable $25 mouse

With this workshop, designers can:

• Rediscover the design thinking at the source of today's UIs
• Understand how design choices make experimental innovations like the mouse and graphical interface accessible to millions of users
• Think about discoverable interfaces and the importance of user success
• Reconsider ways to balance simplicity and power of use

Hands-on experience:

• Functional Newton MessagePad
• Documentation

Examples of what we'll explore:

• How and why the Newton wanted to do away with files, folders, and even apps
• The boom and crash of pen computing in the 90s
• Newton OS, a massive UX effort to reimagine the computer as a magic notebook
• Handwriting as the primary interaction: Newton OS 2 introduced the first embedded AI models for handwriting recognition
• A better copy-paste? Comparison between computer, smartphone, and Newton

With this workshop, designers can:

• Explore how another UX logic could have shaped our relationship with interfaces: a world without applications, but with continuous and fluid interaction
• Question our current habits and see how disruptive innovations can be set aside by cultural and economic inertia
• Imagine what a breakthrough user interface today might be like in the era of generative AI and voice interaction

Hands-on experience:

• Functional iPhone 2G 1.0
• Functional iPad 1

Examples of what we'll explore:

• Jobs' gentle lie about touch at the iPhone launch in 2007!
• The innovator's dilemma through the relationship between the iPod, the iTunes project on Motorola Razr i3, and the iPhone
• How the initial failure of the on-screen keyboard nearly got the iPhone canceled after just a few months
• The three categories of predictive UI, illustrated by the iPhone's UI
• The real ancestor of the iPhone? A 2004 Mac Tablet prototype for which Bas Ording invented the UIs still used today
• Why the iPad was the first success of tablets after decades of failures
• Vertical integration of hardware, software, and content

With this workshop, designers can:

• Understand how to manage the gradual introduction of a technological breakthrough
• Revisit their approach to prototype-based design methods and its role in revealing unknowns in UX
• Draw inspiration from the "just good enough to be great" approach to design products that prioritize experience over technical perfection
• Reflect on future UX transitions: which current interfaces might be the target of a completely new approach?