My very first job in computing, in 1983, was to design and implement a replacement for a paper-based inventory control system, using Unify database (which included a pretty good set of terminal-based user interface elements).
My boss at the time (an experienced electrical engineer) made me spend a couple of weeks working inventory, and using all the paper forms I’d be replacing. He insisted that whatever I did had to reflect the tasks that were done on a routine basis by the people doing the job. In other words, he insisted that I do exactly what you describe.
The system I developed is still in use today, despite that fact that by modern standards it’s an antique. It now runs in X11 terminal windows rather than physical terminals. But because it was designed to do what the users needed, they never wanted or needed to change it.
When I went to college (after this initial programming experience), I learned about HCI, and while your characterization is somewhat familiar, they nevertheless also taught me that HCI began at the design process, and that understanding the users needs at the beginning of design is important.
The point here is that the ideas you are talking about are not new, they weren’t new in 1990, they weren’t even new when computers were created. But what seems to happen is that good ideas are complex and subtle, but in communicating them we reduce them down to “essentials”. So HCI was a name for all the design principles that are important to a final product, but somehow the thing that gets remembered is just one single element (usability testing), to the point that designers then want to distance themselves from that because they want a more complete approach.
And so they came up with a new acronym, and restated the principles, and it was good, until that too got boiled down to a single point of emphasis, at which point people said no that’s bad and then we got a new acronym and a new set of principles (which actually haven’t changed at all over time, except for emphasis). And this new set of principles again gets boiled down to the single over-emphasized piece, and then people hate it again. And so on.
There exists no set of excellent design principles that will not eventually be watered down to a senseless set of rules of thumb.
