A Look back at the history of UX/UI Web Design

In the 1990s, website design took on a life of its own. Before the website design industry took root, there was a lot of amateur action and trial and error happening when designing websites. Innovation was at the forefront and the question “What should a website even look like?” was asked between the growing mass of web designers.

It was an odd time for website design, many websites were filled with ambient banners, neon colors, and proudly-positioned site counters. It was also a time where the Internet became a place where design, user experience, and user integration mattered more than ever before. The design, feel, and look of a webpage defined its success.

In this early era, there was a lot of belief that web pages would be a participatory medium, where companies or individuals could have a website only if they felt so inclined. Since there weren’t any rules or conventions about what a website should be or look like, designers could be collaborative, ask questions, and find out how to use the medium. At the forefront of this experimentation was GeoCities. Started by David Bohnett and John Rezner, this web hosting company provided a small amount of web space for free (about two megabytes at first), and then charged a monthly fee if you wanted more storage space.

This was innovative compared to other website options at the time, which were costly. GeoCities became a huge step in the democratization of the Internet, allowing anyone with an Internet connection to easily publish information on the web.

The strength of the web was its ability to bring users of a website into the process itself. The hope was that, with GeoCities, everybody could have a website, and everybody could have a “home base” on the web. It was a way to communicate with others online. Users were like pioneers, citizens of a brand new country. They called themselves "netizens" and they were learning to imagine the world wide web as a territory they could inhabit.

While personalizing their sites, GeoCities members would bedeck their pages with banners promoting personal causes, ads for their favorite software, holiday-themed animated GIFs, or images from their favorite TV shows. By the late 1990s, GeoCities’ popularity exploded, and it became the third most visited site on the web. During this time, the number of websites on GeoCities expanded dramatically. By the early 2000s, GeoCities hosted web pages on just about every topic imaginable.

Yahoo purchased GeoCities in 1999. Years later, in 2009, Yahoo shut it down. When GeoCities closed, the web had already begun to turn. It was becoming something that was a little more mainstream. Although the internet was already a place of business, it started to become more mainstream.Though personal expression and exploration was starting to get lost in the tide, it wasn’t completely gone. Even as the amateur paradise of GeoCities became a ghost town, a whole new culture of professional web design was emerging.

Internet Explorer, Adobe Flash, and CSS were new technologies for the web that arrived around this time. A new world of web design was unleashed, where professional designers could flex their muscles. Instead of being optional, every company now needed a website of their own.

Something else happened, too. As companies began creating websites, they also wanted predictable results. Clicks and signals of user behavior were starting to add up to a culture of hard data. There was a push toward best practices. And clients wanted their websites to look and feel like every other website.

Fast forward to today, web designs need to be as inclusive and simple as possible. Human centric designs that contain clear language and easily accessible menus, are key. Usability is the most prominent factor for today's internet users who have high demands. User experience (UX) and User interface (UI) designs became increasingly important in the ‘90s and are now vital to success in the modern technology age.

It’s easy for some to see these two terms as the same concept, but they’re actually slightly different. UI is the series of screens, pages, and visual elements—like buttons and icons—that enable a person to interact with a product or service. UX evolved as a result of improvements to UI. Once the users had something with which to interact, their experience— whether positive, negative, or neutral—changed how users felt about those interactions.

Donald Norman, a cognitive scientist, coined the term UX. When he joined the team at Apple in the early 90s he needed a term that would encompass all that UX is. As he explains: “The first requirement for an exemplary user experience (UX) is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.”

In 1995, users had the patience to sit through an animation, and find out what the website was about. If you were told the website was cool enough, you'd sit there while the animation loaded. Website designers can no longer make that assumption. Today’s users need information, and it’s a much more transactional experience. Today’s web is about doing, seeing, and learning. To make these things happen, a website needs to have an exceptional user experience.

Design an unrivaled user experience website with Moser Consulting

Although the ‘90s may have seemed like the glory days for the web, there are many options for those who want their website to be creative and boast an extraordinary UX/UI design for today's users. At Moser Consulting, we offer uniquely crafted user experiences. We help you engage more customers with websites and mobile apps that offer outstanding user experience, performance, and design.

Your company’s website is often the first place your customers will interact with your business. A poorly designed or outdated website amounts to potentially thousands of lost opportunities every day as prospective customers find your site only to click away in search of a more satisfying online experience.

Our team has the experience you need to manage the entire spectrum of application development, from the discovery and planning of a comprehensive interactive strategy to the development,testing, and optimization of your online applications. Learn more about our application development here.