Largely agreed, but if you'll permit me to get cute, I'd suggest that's there's always been UX. Whether in city design, the evolution of tool usage, invention, product design, etc. UX is at the very heart of why we, as humans, always seek to improve upon our lot.
The difference with software is that, for the first time in our history, we're able to measure, isolate, quantify, and control the elements of UX better than we've ever been able to. (It helps that software is often experienced in isolation from its environment, so UI can be more closely correlated with UX than it is for other domains). UX was a fuzzy, ethereal, probably subconscious concept that only recently became a serious discipline. But it's always been important. And our brains have evolved to conceptualize it, albeit intangibly until now.
Largely agreed, but if you'll permit me to get cute, I'd suggest that's there's always been UX. Whether in city design, the evolution of tool usage, invention, product design, etc.
Permission denied. :) Everything but tool usage is in the realm of cultural evolution. For the simplest tools, most all of the error is user error. There's simply not so much functionality in a stick that isn't mostly dependent on user actuation.
our brains have evolved to conceptualize it, albeit intangibly until now.
That's my point. UX flaws that are independent of user error have been largely intangible until now.
Define "cultural evolution," though. I'm not sure what you mean there. Not trying to be difficult, because I rather enjoy this conversation. Just unclear about the distinction you're drawing.
I'd argue that UX design -- even if it didn't have that exact name -- has been a distinct discipline long before software. Just ask anyone in the food service industries, the retail industry (department stores were basically innovations in UX in retail; so was IKEA), the casino gaming industry, the amusement park industry, and so forth.
Casinos, in particular, are fascinating UX case studies. The person who first thought of modern casino layout, comping free drinks at table games, oxygenating the gambling floor, removing clocks from the walls, comping rooms and other amenities for big spenders and regulars, which games to place adjacent to which others, etc., was a UX designer in spirit if not in title. And those decisions were pretty rigorously tested and quantified. These things may not meet the technical definition of UX as we commonly speak of it on HN, but they certainly hold with the spirit of the discipline Don Norman would later come to articulate as "UX."
As for a definition, I'm talking about the evolution of individual behaviors as transmitted through culture. If one somehow rendered the entire human race sterile, but we continued to propagate ourselves for the next 2000 years through cloning, you'd still have "cultural evolution."
I'd argue that UX design -- even if it didn't have that exact name -- has been a distinct discipline long before software.
Again, I don't disagree. That you bring this up indicates to me you've missed my point.
food service industries, the retail industry..., the casino gaming industry, the amusement park industry...
All of these predate most of the evolution of the human brain's structure and capabilities. It's somewhat true that there were "UX errors" before the stone age. I say "somewhat" because it's really hard to delineate these as entities without a certain degree of technology. When all you have are sticks, what is the error of the designer and what is the error of the user? Maybe the user's just "holding it wrong?"
It seems to me, that we're likely to assign blame to sentient and animate entities. And even if the stick wasn't "whittled correctly" according to Thag, maybe it's just fine to Ookla? It's just hard to talk about "UX errors" as quantifiable entities until we get standardized production and large sample sizes.
If I understand your original point correctly, it's this: it is human nature to attribute most things to user error, ergo, my assertion that Wikipedia's blaming its users was a "head-scratcher" was off the mark. Our evolved inclination, which predates the discipline of even considering UX as a tangible -- and, more important, a controllable -- concept, is first to start with the hypothesis that the user is in error. (And, furthermore, that such a hypothesis is not necessarily unjustified by historical frequency).
I actually agree with you here, but I think this point and mine are not so much at odds, as they are orthogonal. My point is that, human nature or not, Wikipedia came about in the modern era. Even if our cognitive bias/inclination is toward blaming the user, we have tools and analytic frameworks at our disposal which exist precisely to allow a necessary check against our brains' heuristics. Those checks should have been run by the Wikimedia elite. While I'll admit that "head-scratcher" is an unfair description, rendered mostly for rhetorical effect, I believe my point still stands. We have modern tools at our disposal, precisely because we are now -- uniquely, in our history -- aware of our brains' strengths and weaknesses in pattern recognition and situational assessment.
If this is not an accurate summation of your position, then I'll freely admit that I'm missing your point.
The difference with software is that, for the first time in our history, we're able to measure, isolate, quantify, and control the elements of UX better than we've ever been able to. (It helps that software is often experienced in isolation from its environment, so UI can be more closely correlated with UX than it is for other domains). UX was a fuzzy, ethereal, probably subconscious concept that only recently became a serious discipline. But it's always been important. And our brains have evolved to conceptualize it, albeit intangibly until now.