Articles describing theory behind GUIs:

	“Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system” by Ivan E. Sutherland, from proceedings of AFIPS 1963 The seminal paper describing Sketchpad, a system using the first graphical user interface
	“Microelectronics and the Personal Computer” by Alan C. Kay, from Scientific American 1977 A seminal paper about the possibilities of personal computing, exemplified in Xerox Alto
	“Xerox xooms toward the office of the future” by Bro Uttal, from Fortune 1981 An article about Xerox Star and changes in Xerox’s Office Products Division
	“The Star user interface: an overview” by David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball and Eric Harslem, from proceedings of AFIPS 1982 An illustrated description of the Xerox 8010 “Star” interface
	“Designing the Star User Interface” by Dr. David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, Bill Verplank and Eric Harslem, from Byte 1982 Extensive breakdown of rules and ideas behind Xerox Star interface (with screenshots)
	“Lisa user interface guidelines”, 1983 Fragments of Apple Lisa GUI guidelines
	“Human factors testing in the design of Xerox’s 8010 ‘Star’ office workstation” by William L. Bewley, Teresa L. Roberts, David Schroit and William L. Verplank, from CHI ‘83 Conference Proceedings A description of various user tests conducted while developing the Xerox Star user interface
	“Visi On’s Interface Design” by George Woodmansee, from Byte 1983 An article describing the methods and concepts used during creation of Visi On
	“The integrated software and user interface of Apple’s Lisa” by Edward W. Birss, from proceedings of the AFIPS 1984 National Computer Conference Description of basic rules governing the Lisa GUI
	“The Visi On™ experience – From concept to marketplace” by George Woodmansee, from Proceedings of INTERACT ’84 Similar paper from a Human-Computer Interaction conference, outlining Visi On’s development
	“Apple Lisa Graphical Object-Oriented User Interface” by David T. Craig, 1987 An outline of Lisa’s user interface principles
	“The cutting edge” by John C. Dvorak, from MacUser 1988 A humorous look at the desktop metaphor
	“The Xerox Star: A retrospective” by Jeff Johnson, Teresa L. Roberts, William Verplank, David C. Smith, Charles H. Irby, Marian Beard and, from IEEE Computer 1989 A description of Xerox Star’s design, development, features and evolution
	“The myth of the interface” by Robin Nelson, from Personal Computing 1990 Some thoughts on how the GUIs threaten the old-school computing
	“New interface dilemmas” by Jim Seymour, from PC Magazine 1992 The problems with menus and drag-and-drop in GUIs and some ideas for the future
	“Accelerators and toolbars: learning from the menu” by Alan Dix, 1995 A paper proposing changes in menus that make accelerators and toolbars easier to learn
	“Hands across the screen” by Alan Dix, 1997 “Why are scrollbars on the right, and is it the best place for them?”
	“Inventing the Lisa User Interface” by Roderick Perkins, Dan Smith Keller, Frank Ludolph, from Interactions 1997 An illustrated history of developing the Lisa GUI
	“The Lisa user interface” by Frank Ludolph and Roderick Perkins, from CHI ‘98 Conference Summary A short summary of Lisa’s interface principles
	“One thousand square pixels of canvas” by Marcin Wichary, 2003 Exclusive: A paper on evolution of icons in graphical interfaces