Ok, this connection is not usually clear but, read me out. First and foremost, the study of Human experience is, in the end, the study of User Experience.
Furthermore, when you look at History through the lens of UX, you can see it has actually been there all along. Think of the Parthenon, in Athens. It was built with the explicit intention of making Athens look strong, rich, and powerful so it could become even stronger, richer, and more powerful (there’s your client brief). Architects, mathematicians, and other specialists worked in tandem to create THE building, the Parthenon, which would be the pinnacle of beauty expressed through architecture (there’s your UX design team). But, this building was not intended for itself, it was intended for people traveling toward Athens, so they would see how mighty and perfect it was, and so, its columns are not the same size, they are not even straight, they are made so that those traveling towards it will perceive them as such; if they had been made perfectly straight, then they would have looked crooked and wrong for the approaching Greeks (and that’s the proverbial user).
As you can see, we have been matching client expectations with users’ needs and perceptions for centuries. The Parthenon is just one example (which also makes for a lovely section cover, doesn’t it?), there are Gothic Cathedrals matching the Church’s desire to instill the fear of God in every visitor, there’s Disneyland and there are those terrible examples from mid-twentieth century we all know about. UX has been there all along, and I have been studying it, gaining insight and understanding of how it has been done, how it has worked, and how it could work in our brave new world.