This is a heuristic evaluation of my perspective that compares early GUIs to modern GUIs.
What changed?
Color: the immediate change that I see is color. Early GUIs only had black and white, while today we have all sorts of colors.
Resolution & speed: today we have interfaces of high resolution leading to a higher speed and more pixels.
Shortcuts & hotkeys: as more people use computers, designers have found ways to make more shortcuts so that users can do work more effectively. Shortcuts can be like adding more buttons. More hotkeys are added such as Alt+Tab to switch between tabs.
Icons: the icons of today are more detailed because of the higher resolution, this makes us unable to see the pixelated outlines.
Filtering & hierarchy: today I can filter my files alphabetically, with/without icons, or date created.
Organization: similar to folders, I can organize my files into stacks, downloads, documents, color-coded files, or hard drives. The overall interface of where things are located has changed, for example, to tell time I’ll look at the top right of my computer instead of clicking on a file on my desktop.
Memory & storage: extensive storage and memory to add more things.
Uploading: I can upload my own images, videos, sounds, or grab them from the internet.
Applications: today we have applications that are either downloaded from the internet or that already come with the computer. This opens a whole new world of GUIs that are designed for each application.
Recording: I can record my screen and save it to a folder.
Extensions: today we have extensions such as .mp4, .pdf, .txt, etc.
iCloud & sharing: I can quickly share documents and files to another device and vice versa.
Personalization: today I can personalize my computer to my liking such as changing the background of my desktop, switching users, where I want my application displayed, picking which applications are opened when I turn on my computer, and changing the format of my browser to dark mode, to pick a few.
What stayed the same?
Windows & pop-ups: we still have windows to switch between what we’re working on. We still pop-up message windows that overlay the other windows.
Minimize, maximize, and close: the three classic buttons located at the top of a window are still present.
Scroll bar
Icons: some classic icons have generally stayed the same, such as the trash can, folders, and the loading icon.
Marquee selection: drag and select multiple files at once.
Menu bar: the menu bar has stayed the same such as file, edit, and view.
Resizing windows and objects
Finder: to navigate our files and organize them.
Widgets: widgets such as calculator and clock.
Fonts: we still have some of the classic fonts such as Roboto and Helvetica but at a higher resolution.
Which interactions continue to change?
I think that interactions that will continue to change are the look and feel of an interface.
Take a look at this example in 2013 when the look and feel upgraded to iOS 7. I remember this being a huge breakthrough for Apple when I was in high school.
Something else that I think will continue to change is the location of things in an interface. Take a look at this recent example, when the iOS 15 Beta launched in 2021.
