UX often involves research and customer interaction. UI is more straight up visual design, informed by the UX research. The same person might not do both. Do you think they should?

Yes. Yes, they should. A person who does UI and doesn't have first-hand experience on what customers want and do is not a UI designer. That person is a dribbble illustrator.

I remember clearly the first time I ever heard the term “UX”. It was condescending explained by some guy from Google to a quite technical audience of telcos, many years ago. For reasons I couldn’t explain, it pissed me off.

Later, they produced Material Design.

The prosecution rests, your honour.

What do you think the best design system today is?

- https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

- https://bbc.github.io/gel/

- (not strictly design system s) https://every-layout.dev/ and https://book.inclusive-components.design/

These are by people whose primary goal isn't promotions, keynotes or CVs.

Tailwind also does a decent job with both the framework itself and the commercial UI examples: https://tailwindui.com/

Apple famously did many years of intense user testing to develop their HIG (and maybe still do?). I’m pretty sure xerox did too, and all the other UI researchers many years ago. Maybe even Microsoft did :)

In any case, it contradicts your claim, since all this user research was way, way before UX was a thing.

Honestly I just got the feeling that the phrase UI had become stale and UX was just seen as a way for a new generation to put their mark on the world.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.

Apple HIG from 1987 and 1985 (mini-thread): https://twitter.com/andy_matuschak/status/144740767185059020...

The 1985 edition "includes e.g. case studies (useful!), and an extended discussion of Jung's theories of intuition and how they should influence your designs (!!)"