There is a lot that goes into User Experience and User Design. It is super interesting to look back on how much user interfaces have changed over the last 30-40 years. User interfaces are designed to enhanced User Experience and make a task easier, more intuitive, and more enjoyable for the user.
In the early days of the computer, there was no real interface for the user, there was just a punch car (or something similar) that was used to feed the machine with the commands you wanted it to execute.
Then came along CLIs (Commands Line Interfaces) and this changed everything. A person was able to interact with the computer in just a matter of seconds. Next, GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) came along and this set the stage for computer interfaces or computer screens, as we know them today. With a mouse and cursor, you could move things around on the screen and select and open files. This was a huge advancement from controlling all of your files via the command line.
Operating Systems continued to advance and become more user-friendly with higher resolution displays and more user interactivity. With the rise of the smartphone and tablet, User interfaces changed drastically again as they were deigned and engineered to be even more user friendly with small portable touch screens and new features like facial recognition.
With the rise of IoT (the Intern or Things) and smart homes, user interfaces have become even more common in almost every aspect of our lives – our computers, our smart phones, our fridges, our heating and cooling systems, our cars.
User interfaces will continue to change with machine learning making our lives easier and making the interface more beautiful, easy-to-use, and intuitive. They will continue to improve our lives in numerous ways.