Digital interfaces have changed a lot since the good old days of CERN’s first webpage. UI design has evolved in a very unpredictable way, generating new trends year after year always based on the needs and expectations of users. Also, in popular culture, we can find more and more user interfaces: TV shows, movies, comics and video clips are full of digital systems and it is very interesting to see how the media industry perceives the “shape” of technology and how it is used. From the colorful (and pixelated) iframe-based websites in the 90s to the minimalist and pretentious interfaces of 2020, we will take a journey through the trends, patterns and perception of mass culture of user interfaces, trying to understand how and why. they evolved in this way. Furthermore, we will try to understand why hackers in TV shows are able to break into the FBI’s servers by simply clicking a button.

Paola is an italian digital product designer with more than 15 years of experience. She started as a web master in the early 00s, building web 1.0 sites. After years in digital agencies, she switched to focus on user experience and interface design. She now works as UX/UI Designer at Casavo, one of the most innovative italian proptech startups. She worries about usability, design patterns, engineering design process, heuristic evaluation, information architecture and cognitive design. She is on the jury of the international design and development awards CSS Design Awards.