When the Xerox Star came out in 1981, it was kind of a big deal because it changed how people thought about computers. Before that, you had to type in commands and know specific codes to make things work. But the Star had this graphical interface with icons and windows that looked like a desktop, which is basically what we still use now. Apple and Microsoft both copied these ideas later for their own systems.
The Star let people use a mouse to click on stuff, open files, and move things around on the screen. This made it way easier for regular people who weren’t computer experts to actually use computers. Before this, you basically had to be a programmer or really tech-savvy.
It also had other stuff that we think is normal now – like computers connected to each other in networks, email, and being able to see what your document would look like when you printed it. These things turned computers from these specialized machines into something you could actually use for everyday work and communication.
The weird thing is the Star didn’t actually sell well. It was too expensive or something. But even though it failed commercially, it influenced everything that came after. It basically proved that how something looks and how easy it is to use matters just as much as the technical specs. That’s pretty important for interaction design.