An oral history of the hamburger icon

Kimball: We struggled with whether to build a user interface that was ultra simple with no advanced commands that could “confuse” the user, or allow special escapes enabling higher productivity for experienced users. In the Star development, we had to choose very specific answers to many of these questions.

Smith: We wanted people to be able to do useful things with Star but we didn’t want it to seem complicated. It’s not easy to make complicated things easy. The simpler we made the interface, the harder we had to work to do it.

Cox: I don’t think we realized what a special time it was at the time. You’re just a bunch of hippies doing your thing that sort of sets the world of technology on its ear and changes everything.

References this 1990 history of the widget (video)

Contains this video on the Star interface:

via Julien Deswaef on mastodon

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