The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

by Alan Cooper

Book Overview

Imagine, at a terrifyingly aggressive rate, everything you regularly use is being equipped with computer technology. Think about your phone, cameras, cars - everything - being automated and programmed by people who in their rush to accept the many benefits of the silicon chip, have abdicated their responsibility to make these products easy to use. The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0672326140
• ISBN13: 9780672326141
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Sams Publishing
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

this book changed my life

I was a well-paid systems administrator/help desk guy until I read this book. This book really did inspire me to change careers! The book basically outlines why engineers (and people who think like engineers) are INCAPABLE of designing effective interfaces. It delves into specifics and supplies some great examples. I am amused by some of the reviewers here who display the same sort of arrogant contempt that the book outlines. OF COURSE programming a VCR is easy for YOU--you're a person with an "engineer mind". My mom can't program a VCR at all, and that's not because she didn't try hard enough or read the instructions. She can't use it because everything about it's interface is counter-intuitive to someone who does not understand machine/code logic. Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it doesn't stink. Just because it makes sense to you doesn't mean it can't be made better--to work intuitively for "regular" people. Buy this book. Read it. Demand more from your products. It's time to end the insanity.

Groundbreaking, paradigm shifting book

Every once in a while you'll read a book or part of a book that completely shifts your thinking. This is one of those books. Alan Cooper (father of Visual Basic) presents for us a litany of horrific examples of interface design, and lays out the case for why spending time and money up front on usability and interaction design will produce the greatest returns of all the steps in software development. But the paradigm shift occurs in Chapters 9 and 10, "Designing for Pleasure", "Designing for Power", where Cooper hits home the power of the user-centered design process and illustrates the inherent mistakes which almost all software developers make during development. Here's a hint: if you start with requirements specifications, you're already screwed.

This book will change your thinking about software design

Everyone involved in the software industry should read this book. It should also be made a text-book for those studying to enter the asylum.I have been developing software for the last 15 years and I could see myself and most of the projects I have worked on described in this book. It will offend a lot of people, but most people don't like to see themselves described this way. It has completely changed my view of the software I develop in one reading.There are two important concepts Cooper covers -The first is goal oriented design. What does the user want from the software? More often than not software bogs down in task and function design. The end result is not usually the focus. From this he asks, How do know when the software is finished?The second is defining 'personas' for the people who will use the software. You give them a name, needs and a personality. Not just a vague 'user' of the software. (As an aside, software developers and...dealers are the only two industries that call their customers 'users'.) From these personas you develop the software. More often than not you will end up developing a number of applications depending on the needs of each, not trying to develop a 'one-size-fits-all' program. Defining personas also keeps the marketers and other interested parties involved (and focussed.)As you read through these reviews you will notice that reviewer either loves or hates the book. You will also notice that Visual Basic, and the fact that Cooper is its 'Father' will get a disparaging comment in the low rating reviews. People forget that the end result, the goal, is the most important thing, not the fact the builder used a hand saw and not a power saw to build the house.

Escaped Inmate Reviews the System

Author Alan Cooper, "Father of Visual Basic" is- or was- an "inmate" himself. Thus he is able to provide both an insider's and an outsider's perspective on what the inmates do well and what- in order to bring some semblance of sanity back to our computerized existence- they need help with. The inmates here are software engineers- or as they often self-describe, "software designers". But that is exactly the point of this book- that software engineers, because of what they know, how they think, and who they are, are not and can not be "interaction designers". And an interaction designer is exactly what Cooper is now that he's been "sprung". Yet one of the beauties of this work is that Cooper doesn't take an inmate-bashing approach. He understands that "the creation of software is so intellectually demanding, so all-consuming, that programmers must completely immerse themselves" (16). And therein lies the dilemma- the programmer wants the construction process to be smooth and easy, and the user wants the interaction with the program to be smooth and easy. Yet, as Cooper observes, these two objectives "almost never result in the same program" (16). Cooper reveals the programmer as "caught in a conflict of interest between serving the user's needs and making their programming job easier" (81) when they indeed do try to design. Furthermore, he informs the reader that "anyone untrained in interaction design methods tends towards self-referential design" (87). Thus, if the inmates are as different from the bulk of users as Cooper implies, programmers' design attempts are not only constrained by their deep understanding of the needs of the program, but also by their own points of reference as users. The solution Cooper proposes here is of an integrated development process that involves an interaction designer from the get go, a model which is distinctly different from that of a designer adding an interface to the product once it is completed. We can illustrate this difference in home-ownership terms.Interface design- what we all are most familiar with- entails moving the furniture around to make the house more accommodating to inhabitants once the house is built and all the furniture already purchased- and it's a house that someone else designed and furniture your family and friends have given you as gifts. Interactive design, on the other hand, is the involvement of an architect and a future homeowner in the development of house plans that truly meet the homeowner's needs. It's a process where each party takes and cedes the lead as they work together to understand each others' perspectives, restrictions, needs, etc., and as a result, the finished product doesn't require add-ons or remodeling to be functional. With an exploration of "cognitive dissonance", this book speaks to an "older" generation- one (or ones) that were not born into the electronic age, but that have had to adapt into it. I can't imagine that anyo

Lot's of folks in high-tech need to take this book to heart.

After reading this book, my eyes have been opened to a different perspective.This book is an excellent Business Case for why design is important with high-tech products. Too often, the importance of design is ignored. Despite what some seem to think, this industry is not a playground for boys with toys. Unless you work in research, your purpose is not to play with the latest cool technology. Your purpose is to facilitate the operation of the business. Period!This is a business. Our goal in business is to make money, and hopefully improve some part of our lives in the process. We do this by shipping good products. Mr. Cooper's ideas benefit anyone with these goals. Anyone who does not see this has their head in the sand. You are the apologists that he speaks of in his book. The truth hurts. Sorry...My advice: Read this book with an open mind. Take the ideas that are good and apply them to your own career. Our industry will be better for it.