Product Description

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 the business executives who make the decisions to develop these products are not the ones in control of the technology used to create them. Insightful and entertaining, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum uses the author's experiences in corporate America to illustrate how talented people continuously design bad software-based products and why we need technology to work the way average people think. Somewhere out there is a happy medium that makes these types of products both user and bottom-line friendly; this book discusses why we need to quickly find that medium.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21583 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In this book about the darker side of technology's impact on our lives, Alan Cooper begins by explaining that unlike other devices throughout history, computers have a "meta function": an unwanted, unforeseen option that users may accidentally invoke with what they thought was a normal keystroke. Cooper details many of these meta functions to explain his central thesis: programmers need to seriously re-evaluate the many user-hostile concepts deeply embedded within the software development process.

Rather than provide users with a straightforward set of options, programmers often pile on the bells and whistles and ignore or de-prioritise lingering bugs. For the average user, increased functionality is a great burden, adding to the recurrent chorus that plays: "computers are hard, mysterious, unwieldy things." (An average user, Cooper asserts, who doesn't think that way or who has memorised all the esoteric commands and now lords it over others, has simply been desensitised by too many years of badly designed software.)

Cooper's writing style is often overblown, with a pantheon of cutesy terminology (i.e. "dancing bearware") and insider back-patting. (When presenting software to Bill Gates, he reports that Gates replied: "How did you do that?" to which he writes: "I love stumping Bill!") More seriously, he is also unable to see beyond software development's importance--a sin he accuses programmers of throughout the book.

Even with that in mind, the central questions Cooper asks are too important to ignore: Are we making users happier? Are we improving the process by which they get work done? Are we making their work hours more effective? Cooper looks to programmers, business managers and what he calls "interaction designers" to question current assumptions and mindsets. Plainly, he asserts that the goal of computer usage should be "not to make anyone feel stupid." Our distance from that goal reinforces the need to rethink entrenched priorities in software planning. -- Jennifer Buckendorff, Amazon.com

Synopsis
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 the business executives who make the decisions to develop these products are not the ones in control of the technology used to create them. Insightful and entertaining, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum uses the author's experiences in corporate America to illustrate how talented people continuously design bad software-based products and why we need technology to work the way average people think. Somewhere out there is a happy medium that makes these types of products both user and bottom-line friendly; this book discusses why we need to quickly find that medium.

From the Back Cover

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 the business executives who make the decisions to develop these products are not the ones in control of the technology used to create them. Insightful and entertaining, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum uses the author's experiences in corporate America to illustrate how talented people continuously design bad software-based products and why we need technology to work the way average people think. Somewhere out there is a happy medium that makes these types of products both user and bottom-line friendly; this book discusses why we need to quickly find that medium.

Customer Reviews

Important lessons for software engineers
This is a highly readable and entertaining rant directed against the inadequate development practices of software engineers over the years.

I am one of the geeks that Cooper targets, but I think I'm sufficiently self aware to know that his point is entirely justified. Building workable, usable applications on time and on budget is a fiendishly difficult problem. Pretty well all of the effort in improving our working practices has focussed on getting our job done more efficiently and predictably so that customers get their applications in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost. We've always been pretty clueless about the human side, making sure that the applications can be used easily and efficiently. That, of course, has great practical and financial consequences, but the cost is often hidden from the developers who have moved on to screw up elsewhere.

Cooper sometimes overdoes his argument, and minimises the real, practical problems involved in applying his techniques. His insistence on calling all developers as "programmers" is a bit irritating, but I can accept that as a stylistic quirk rather than evidence of ignorance of software engineering.

I'd strongly recommend this to software developers who are starting to have doubts about whether they're really delivering what users need. Of course, the ones who have no doubts are the ones who really need to read this book, but I suspect they wouldn't even pick it up, and they's throw it aside after the first few pages if they did give it a go. Pity.

Excellent information aggressively presented
This book provides a wealth of knowledge if you can stick with it through the generalisations and attacks on the group of people who need this book the most.

Something Mr Cooper talks about is people not knowing their customers, but falls into this trap himself. While the book may have been written with managers and project leaders in mind, many developers will read it as a means of improving themselves.

With this in mind, writing a book that often hints at poor interface design being a deliberate attack on users, and in some places implies that software is hard to use because programmers are getting back at people because they were picked on in high school might be a little silly. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful in getting the message across, and will not help business people further understand their staff.

Helping business people understand that different people have different skills and getting the right person for the job will deliver better results than forcing someone to do a job they are not suited for would have been a better result. As it is, I can see how some PHBs would come away from this book believing that they produce bad software because their developers hate them, rather than because they have poor processes and do not invest enough time and money in the right places.

A must read for all people involven in software development.
The book addresses many areas of why the culture that exists in IT and firms that deal with IT is not working and why many IT projects go wrong. He points out that this is not due to lack of design, but because design is not done in the proper way. He talks about the roles of everyone (managers, programmers, designers, users, etc.) during the design and what things are been done wrong. He goes into depth why programmers are the least suitable people to do the design and how they can not "think as users". The good thing about this book is that it also gives many advices and ways on how to do things the right way. Thus, he does not only identify the problem areas, but he goes on and suggest solutions and ways to improve.

This book is a very good reading for everyone who is involved in the ANY part in the software development phase. I strongly recommend that people take some time to read it, or just browse through some areas of it. The book is split in two major parts:

The first part (Chapters 1-8) shows why there is more of a cultural problem than a technical problem on the way that software is developed. It is a good background reading to understand the rest of the book.

The second half (Chapters 9-14) suggest ways to improve the bad culture and create software that is actually helping and not embarrassing the users. This is the part is the main core of the book and needs reading. It can be understood more deeply once the first part has been read, but this part can be read on its own as well.