I remember it as "human-machine interaction" and "HMI design" or "interaction design". It was mostly about positioning interface elements, clear iconography, and workflows with as little surprises and opportunities for errors as possible. In industrial design, esp. for SCADA, it is often still called HMI.
Yeah, if you wanted to study usability (or what we call UX today), you'd take the ergonomics course, and there'd be usability classes. So you'd learn about how to sit at a desk, how to design a remote control, and where to put the buttons in an application.
It does seem a bit weird, but I feel like this bigger picture is what a lot of today's design lacks.
