Don Norman invented the job title at Apple because "usability" felt too narrow.
In 1993, cognitive scientist Don Norman joined Apple Computer as an Apple Fellow, a position that granted him freedom to roam the company and assess its products.1 After months of observation, he concluded that Apple's reputation for ease of use was eroding. He recruited two colleagues from the Advanced Technology Group, Tom Erickson and Harry Saddler, and together they formed a unit they called the User Experience Architect's Office.
Norman took the title User Experience Architect, making him the first person to carry the phrase "user experience" in a job title.2 He chose the term deliberately. "I invented the term because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow," he later explained. "I wanted to cover all aspects of the person's experience with a system, including industrial design, graphics, the interface, the physical interaction, and the manual."3
Norman had published The Design of Everyday Things in 1988, a book that became foundational to the field of human-centered design.4 His earlier academic work at the University of California, San Diego had focused on cognitive science, and his 1986 book User Centered System Design, co-edited with Stephen Draper, contained what may be the earliest use of the phrase "user experience" in print, written by contributor Brenda Laurel.5
In 1998, Norman and Jakob Nielsen founded the Nielsen Norman Group, a consulting firm dedicated to evidence-based approaches to user experience.6 By then, the web had created an entirely new category of digital products, and the demand for people who could design them around human behavior was accelerating. The title "UX Designer" entered job postings across the technology industry and spread from there into finance, healthcare, government, and retail.
Bell Labs had hired its first psychologist to design telephone systems in 1945.7 Henry Dreyfuss published Designing for People in 1955, arguing that friction between a product and its user represented a design failure. Norman gave a name and a job title to the discipline those predecessors had practiced without one.