A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCREEN DESIGN

• While developers have been designing screens since a cathode ray tube display was first 

attached to a computer, more widespread interest in the application of good design

principles to screens did not begin to emerge until the early 1970s, when IBM introduced

 its 3270 cathode ray tube text-based terminal.

• A 1970s screen often resembled the one pictured in Figure.

It usually consisted of many fields (more than are illustrated here) with very cryptic and 

often unintelligible captions.

• It was visually cluttered, and often possessed a command field that challenged the 

user to remember what had to be keyed into it.

• Ambiguous messages often required referral to a manual to interpret.

• Effectively using this kind of screen required a great deal of practice and patience.

• Most early screens were monochromatic, typically presenting green text on black 

backgrounds.

• At the turn of the decade guidelines for text-based screen design were finally made 

widely available and many screens began to take on a much less cluttered look

through concepts such as grouping and alignment of elements, as illustrated in Figure