As most UX professionals know, UX essentially began with Ergonomics and Human Factors, and from there it evolved by incorporating additional disciplines, particularly those related to the digital realm. However, many non-digital UX disciplines, including Ergonomics, Industrial Design, Cultural UX, Urban UX, Service Design, and others, have seemingly disappeared from the mainstream branches of UX, despite continuing to exist as separate branches in their own right. This can be observed even on this website, which used to feature a significant number of questions about Physical UX, but now rarely receives one every few months.
I understand that we live in a digital world, which dominates markets and the economy, so it makes sense for this shift to occur. However, physical, cultural, and urban products and services are still being developed, perhaps even more so than before. Yet, designers working on such products and experiences are distanced from the realm of UX. In fact, one of the individuals on my team is a master's degree holder in Industrial Design and a university professor. She mentioned accepting her position at our firm mainly to learn UX because, in the university setting, UX was only briefly mentioned as something done by others, not a concern for industrial designers. She also noted that ergonomics is not even considered part of UX by her colleagues, but rather viewed as an entirely separate discipline, despite the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) explicitly mentioning User Experience on its homepage.
I understand this can be subjective and opinionated, so my question is: Was there a specific event, such as the rise of an association, new paradigms, new theories, or other factors, that caused UX to increasingly become focused solely on the digital realm? (For example, the dreaded UI/UX acronym seems like a clear sign to me, but it doesn't explain everything)
Or do professionals from other disciplines not identify themselves as part of the UX field for some particular reason, like UX is so broad they prefer to be specialized or something like that?