Rating: 
Summary: Extremely poor
Review: I have been passionately interested in usability issues and ways to improve them for a quarter century. I read all that I can on the subject to gain insight into how to make things better. This book, however, fails miserably.It is about 50% personal exorcism, projected onto others, of his own former self. It is about 50% advertisement for the kind of consultant he now stylizes himself as. It is 100% the kind of book on usability you would expect the "Father of Visual Basic" to produce. There is some good information in this book, which would normally merit a rating of two or three stars. However, by its polemical tone, it diverts attention away from really good books by such authors as Donald Norman and Jef Raskin, and, for that matter, Cooper's own _About Face_, which is quite good. If you hate unusable products and are looking for nice, easy scapegoats to be angry about, this will be an enjoyable read. If, however, you are interested in the actual reasons that products are poorly usable or are interested in how to improve the world, this book is worse than useless. One histrionic account describes how he cannot buy a VCR that lets him record shows by setting time with a knob. This would be excusable except for the fact that, the year this book was published, a remote control was being sold that did exactly that, and it recieved saturation advertising on television. The problem is that nobody bought it. Demand was so poor that it isn't made any more, and no sales staff I have spoken with has remembered anyone ever asking for such a device. Yes, there are reasons that devices are not very usable, but in order to understand them one has to look beyond the simple, adversarial, supply-side approach that Cooper and the majority of usability gurus seem to be stuck in. Unfortunately, the field has become so dominated by this kind of ressentiment thinking, that it is unlikely that the real issues can even be published, let alone addressed. Failing that, however, there are still books that can inspire or help build a more usable world. _Asylum_ is simply not one of them, that's all.
Rating: 
Summary: More mud slinging than a US presidential campaign!
Review: Do you hate programmers and engineers? Do you like to read page after page about how evil they are? Would you like to read a book that seems to be written by this very same "Homo Logicus" (programmer) personality? If you answered yes to any of these questions, make use of Amazon's patented "One Click" technology right now! The title, "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum : Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity" is catchy, and as a recent study found, 25% of computer users actually attacked their computers. There is plenty of bad design, and frustration to go around. The opportunity exists for somebody to write a really insightful book identifying the problems and potential solutions to this dilemma. The author COULD have done it. The author makes some headway in pursuit of this goal, and does in fact present a few innovative approaches and solutions to fixing and preventing problems associated with the design process of technology products and software. These nuggets of gold, are littered few and far between the relentless attack on programmers and engineers. We are desperately in need of a change in the focus and design of software and other technologically enhanced products. This book gets a second star, because it provides some valuable insight....it could have been a great book:( There is however, no need to torture yourself reading this book. Keep looking, that is, unless you answered yes to one of the three questions above.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book - if only he'd tell us how to do things right
Review: Alan Cooper is a wonderful writer. His prose is fun, witty, very well written, and full of pertinent and fascinating anecdotes. The book is about all that's wrong with software developement. Why the culture of programming is dysfunctional at heart - and what the consequences are. It's a fascinating and very entertaining read - and also an eye opener. You'll never preach again "code reuse" to your developers in exactly the same way. However, where the book falls short, is when AC fails to to tell how to do things right. He tells us what's wrong, strongly implies that he knows how to do it right -- but defers THAT information to a later book, sadly not yet published. That frustration leads me to rate the book a "4 stars", but, in truth, it's a very impressive, entertaining and accurate read.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is written because of you.
Review: Dear Mr.Cooper. During the recent US president election's accident I declared you were the winner. It probably was the most climatic afterworld of your first book. Thanks for the effort you are spending to prevent your next apotheosis... it could be the Armageddon.
Rating:
Summary: A vastly important manifesto on high-tech product design
Review: Why are ATMs, video recorders, personal computer software, and even vehicle keyless entry systems so hard to operate properly? Must high technology, by its nature, make us feel stupid -- when we're not and it is? Alan Cooper, the inventor of Visual Basic (I don't hold it against him), answers the last question with a table-slamming "No!" He argues, with a snarky sense of persuasive humour, that technology CAN be both powerful and easy to use, but that the current system where programmers run the software development process sabotages any hope of true user-centred interaction design. Like movies, Cooper writes, software should have a long pre-production and design phase, and only a short, intense programming phase -- decidedly the opposite of the current approach. Doing so makes software cheaper and more efficient to make, and better for real people to use. Products made that way are almost bound to beat their competitors. Anyone involved in high-tech product design of any sort must read this book. Really. It changed my outlook on how software and hardware should be built -- and significantly lowered my tolerace for products that frustrate and confound me.
Rating:
Summary: one of the funniest books I've read in ages
Review: Cooper explains that he hates VB; it was meant to be a makeshift until someone could do the job right, but no one ever did- they used the kludge instead! He procedes to skewer most of modern-day software design, quite deservedly in my opinion. I spend a certain amount of my time telling my students that "In Excel, the format category Accounting refers to currency symbols, and the format category Currency refers to accounting conventions," and "The phrase Range_Lookup means 'do you want an exact match?' and if the answer is Yes, you have to type in FALSE." So I am quite alert to how little attention programmers pay to the end users of software. I wish all programmers would read this book! For the rest of us- the end users, the teachers, the people who have to mediate between computers and the not-yet-computer-literate, this book is a great way to at least laugh about it, and to reassure yourselves that it's NOT YOUR FAULT that software seems so illogical!
Rating: 
Summary: Not written for technical audiences, but some sound concepts
Review: In _The Inmates are Running the Asylum_, Cooper attempts to do three things: discuss what is wrong with software interface design in most products, suggest solutions for these issues by providing ways in which software can become more useful and intuitive for users, and give a sales pitch for his services and those of other interface designers. His real strength in the book is pointing out what software interface really doesn't do, and presenting case studies that exemplify these points. His main points are that usual problems include: interfaces that make users figure out information the computer already knows (such as location of files), interfaces that offer users options unavailable to them (such as ATMs listing accounts you don't have), and interfaces that go too much into detail on features the majority of users never utilize. As he goes through the book, he does offer some valid (if sometimes simplistic) solutions to the issues he raised. For example, his solution to simplify an install is to have the install run without requiring user interference. Yes, that's a great solution, but in the cases of some software products, you do need some kind of user input at points, so a happy medium where questions with answers known to the computer are eliminated would work better. He ignores any kind of medium ground, probably because the focus is on concept rather than immediately applicable. No quibbles with his solution of focusing the product for the audience, and eliminating advanced, confusing features from products meant for an audience that doesn't need them. That said, Mr. Cooper seems to be using the book as an extended sales pitch. He obviously pointed the book towards a nontechnical audience. His metaphors and explanations are often overly cutesy and simplistic, and he is outright insulting towards programmers, and other technical people. While this may build a sense of camaraderie for nontechnical users, this was very jarring for a book on design and would seem counterproductive. Interface design people are on a pedestal, and Mr. Cooper on top of the heap, according to the book. While some of the references were meant as examples, other are merely self-aggrandizing, such as his comments on his villa in Italy. Whether he is ignoring his own rule of writing what the audience wants on purpose or accidentally is unclear. Overall, it's a decent book and covers some major issues in interface design, even suggesting a few reasonable alternatives, assuming you can get beyond the sales pitch and poor writing interface.
Rating:
Summary: What a waste
Review: The book has a fantastic title and that's where it stops. Alan Cooper takes an entire book to tell us that software needs to be designed - a shock from someone who created a language that allows programmers to avoid design altogether, Visual Basic. He spends half the book knocking software engineers and the other half plugging his own company. Sprinkled in between are a few good ideas, but by the time you get around the author's arrogant style you no longer enjoy the insights he may offer. It's a pity that a book with such a great title is wasted on uninteresting and repetitious dreariness. It really goes to show that you can't judge a book by its cover.
Rating:
Summary: A guaranteed classic book on software development
Review: Alan Cooper's "The Inmates are Running the Asylum" should be read by every person working in the software development industry. I am quite certain that this tome will become a classic on the subject. Cooper presents many examples of the all-too-common flaws and assumptions that have become the status quo of the software development process. While the subtitle of the book is "Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy...", the book concentrates almost exclusively on computer software. It would have more truthfully been named "Why Computer Software Drives Us Crazy...", but perhaps they thought that would narrow their market. Since I was well aware it was about software development, this was not a problem for me. After Cooper aptly describes the fundamentally flawed programming culture, he provides very practical and usable tools of "escape from the asylum." His technique of "personas" is stunning in its simplicity and power. For anyone developing software, this concept alone is worth many times the price of the book. This tool and many others will leave you muttering again and again, "I wish I had known about that before such-and-such project." The one annoyance of the book is Cooper's unnecessary use of seventy-five cent words where run of the mill words would have done just as well without making the reader pause for a second to recall the meaning of a word that they have only seen in print a half-dozen times in their life. I can only think that Cooper is trying to impress the reader with the obtuse vocabulary. Alan, your ideas and solutions are impressive enough, you can put away your unabridged thesaurus.
Rating:
Summary: You'll finally realize why VCR clocks are difficult to set
Review: Not only are VCR clocks difficult to set, but you will understand why any device with a computer chip in it is usually a challenge to use. In fact, as you read the book and start thinking about its themes, you will realize that most computerized devices are more difficult to use than they should be. And when you start thinking about the devices that you own being are unnecessarily difficult to use, you will become very annoyed. For example, I never questioned until now why my cell phone contains three differenct kinds of locks (keypad lock, phone lock and security lock) when all three locks, to the user, do the same thing--prevent unintended/unauthorzed use of the phone. Why not just lock or unlock the phone? If you are involved with user design, I highly recommend you read this book. The insight it gives you into the minds of technical and non-technical people alone are worth the price.
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