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Summary: A wakeup call for the software industry
Review: This book is written for two audiences. The frustrated computer user will enjoy the early chapters with its anecdotes about computers failing to meet human needs. The rest of the book is for software managers and professionals who want to be change agents in the industry.The problem, says Cooper, is that users and programmers think very differently. Users just want to accomplish a task, and have no interest in understanding how the computer works. Programmers want and need to understand the computer on a deep level, and find it hard to design software to meet the needs of people who don't. Cooper says we need to abandon the idea that there are "power users" and "naive users". Most users are in fact very smart people who just don't think like computers. Cooper's solution is to use 'personas', made up users intended to represent real users with very specific goals, and to design software to meet only those specific users' goals. Design must occur before any code is written, otherwise it is too late. This isn't a manual on how to use Cooper's goal oriented design methods, but after reading this book it is hard not to be convinced that such methods, or equally radical ones, are needed. Cooper may not have all the answers, but he surely has part of the answer, and is asking all the right questions.
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Summary: Where is the reality check?
Review: Good read, just be cautious of the one sided slant to this book! According to this book, the inmates are everywhere and as is the main premise of this book, they are in charge of not only shaping the asylum known as software design, but also our world. Cooper uses various anecdotal examples throughout the book to illustrate his ideas and views on technological design. Focusing entirely on how it has run amuck. Many of the examples are painfully obvious and basic. While points are well made and key to adding to ones thought process about designing software and better ways to bring product to market. Cooper misses the boat with regards to some of the realities of business. I found Cooper's ideas a little too idealistic with little suggestion in terms of comprimise or strategic change. Methodology also seems to be off as book is all general impression based on observation and personal experience. Finally, If you are looking for a reminder about good common sense and a prompt on how to make your customer king, you'll find this a helpful read.
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Summary: A very dangerous guide for any organization
Review: I work for a large computer company that makes software. This book was instrumental in creating and organizing our human interface engineering department. I don't think you can put a price tag on the amount of damage this book and the attitude it promotes has cost us. On the one hand, the examples presented are insightful and on target; on the other hand, Mr. Cooper is a usability consultant, and his goal is to convince you that you need a usability consultant. My company drank the kool-aid, and has even paid for training services based on his work. Part of convincing you that you need a usability consultant is convincing you that your programmers will be congenitally incapable of doing good UI without one. Now, of course, human interface engineering departments eat that up, since it justifies their existence. Human interface engineering departments are a Good Thing. Having two teams (which must collaborate on producing a product that the market will want) at each others throats, waging political wars and each casually making the assumption that the other is incompetent does not lead to an effective organization. But it is the organization that Mr. Cooper's advice can easily lead to. I can say categorically that our product's user interface is *worse*, not better, as a result of the attitudes Mr. Cooper promotes - not due to inattention, but due to the fact that in many cases were everyone agreed improvement was needed, the mutual animosity between the HIE department and the Development department was so great that the decision ended in a stalemate and nothing was done. We are only now pulling away from that era. Read it warily, if you are thinking about how to set up your organization, and remember that it is written with an agenda that may not be set up to benefit you.
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Summary: Ho hum. Should be half this thick.
Review: I found I really had to force myself to finish reading this book. The core concepts are covered in the first half of the book, albeit in a rather drawn out fashion, and the rest is simply reiteration and self-congratulatory rambling about the author's own successes and consulting business, masquerading under a thin guise of case studies. If the essence of this book could be distilled down into a 50 pager you'd have a winner.
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Summary: Change the world! But I'm not going to tell you how.
Review: I found this book to be an excellent review of design problems but it left me asking HOW HOW HOW? The author would tell me what NOT to do, but then shy away from telling me what TO do. He would outline a problem very eloquently, but then not tell me exactly how to solve it. "We must design for the users!" Um... yeah. HOW? If you have no clue about the problems that Interaction Designers face, read this book. If you are already an Interaction Designer, don't bother. I really hope there's a sequel in the works entitled "The Interaction Designers are Running the Design Process: How To Solve Your Design Problems" with lots of concrete examples and positive, rather than negative, design rules. Frustrating.
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Summary: This book will change your thinking about software design
Review: 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.
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Summary: Uh...how do I program this VCR?
Review: In The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Cooper has given us a vehicle to articulate our frustration with today's technology. He does so in a humorous, down-to-earth fashion that puts us at ease with our confusion with today's feature-happy electronic devices and software. He offers an empathetic stance, leading the charge against all the new features we have grown to hate or ignore, thrust on us by overzealous engineers (the inmates) ignoring the pleas of designers and consumers alike. This is quite an admirable task considering he is a guru in the field of technology and one of it's prime developers. He gains his authenticity from his experience within the computer industry. If ever there was someone who should be savvy about technology, it should be Alan Cooper, but he is right there as frustrated as we are with products which require manuals bigger than most dictionaries. In this book, Cooper offers us an insider view of the world of product design and software programming. The world of computers and everyday appliances are merging and, Cooper contends, the merger is not necessarily in the best interest of consumers. He offers some sound advice to designers, engineers and programmers on how to improve the design of products. Although I did not agree with all of his solutions, I still highly recommend this book to anyone who has ever wanted to throw a VCR out a window or designed a product somebody else wanted to throw out a window.
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Summary: Great design approach, but arrogance and repitition hurt
Review: It's worth reading this book -- even despite the painful tone he often takes -- just to pick up on the ideas of creating concrete personas and how you use them to develop your product. We do that today at Microsoft (at least in Developer Tools), and it's a highly successful way of not only building a good product, but also in helping hundreds of developers understand why a feature is 'in' or 'out', no matter how much they might like it personally. It's also mentioned quickly, but the idea of how much work customers are willing to do for an amount of benefit can affect your designs for the better as well. Fundamentally, you should add value with no documentation and no setup -- if somebody paid money, they should feel rewarded as soon as they start to use your application. Then, after they want to do new things, you can require more work of them to do it. However, it should never be more work than the benefit that they derive! This is an important lesson that, say, most media player application writers would be advised to learn... Of course, as many other reviewers have pointed out, it might have been nice if he had created some personas for who his readers were. I doubt that any of them would have had a goal of being preached to.
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Summary: You're either part of the problem or part of the solution
Review: Cooper gets it. He understands that computers and electronics are designed by engineeers, for engineers. But what if you want to design something for the masses? Not just something they will use, but something they will enjoy? Cooper has the idea. If you want to design for "normal" people, you need to put yourself in their shoes. In this bible of high-tech product design, Cooper gives you tools that helps you design products for your target customers. This isn't just a bunch of recipes for GUIs and wizards, but a way to think about how people actually use your tools. I know Cooper's techniques work. I have adopted them across my software development team, and the difference is astounding. Bottom line: If you're involved in high-tech development, design, or marketing, you need this book.
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Summary: You will like this book if you hate the world around you
Review: This book actually starts out nicely up until the point where it turns into a high-pitched whine about everything that the author hates. The content is highly subjective, full of cliches such as "what do you get when you cross a computer and an alarm clock" or constant reptitious nags about why engineers are incompetent when it comes to things that matter. It is laughable to think that an engineer-turn-interaction-designer would come to hate so much what he used to be. On the positive side, the book can be considered a slight improvement from some of the things we had seen from this author in the past (Visual Basic being one i.e. a programming language for minimalists -- almost never used for serious projects in the software industry and to most people utterly useless) Just as the arugument used in the book to say that bad user interaction design stems from letting the engineers (or according to the book's confusing terminology "apologists" or non-solution-oriented people) control dedcision making processes, the same can be said of the overly simplistic often vague interpretations of the world given by the people highly praised in the book (referred to as "survivors"). As can be seen from the first few chapters in the book, the book speculates about things and provides no real facts or knowledge. Perhaps some research notes or real life cases would help. I would suggest looking for a more authorative source of what constitutes a good user design if you are looking to learn more on this subject. Find an author with more academic and industry backing.
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