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

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 004.019
EAN: 9780672326141
ISBN: 0672326140
Label: Sams - Pearson Education
Manufacturer: Sams - Pearson Education
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: March 05, 2004
Publisher: Sams - Pearson Education
Sales Rank: 48944
Studio: Sams - Pearson Education

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Editorial Review:

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.

Amazon.com Review:
The recurring metaphor in The Inmates are Running the Asylum is that of the dancing bear--the circus bear that shuffles clumsily for the amusement of the audience. Such bears, says author Alan Cooper, don't dance well, as everyone at the circus can see. What amazes the crowd is that the bear dances at all. Cooper argues that technology (videocassette recorders, car alarms, most software applications for personal computers) consists largely of dancing bears--pieces that work, but not at all well. He goes on to say that this is more often than not the fault of poorly designed user interfaces, and he makes a good argument that way too many devices (perhaps as a result of the designers' subconscious wish to bully the people who tormented them as children) ask too much of their users. Too many systems (like the famous unprogrammable VCR) make their users feel stupid when they can't get the job done.

Cooper, who designed Visual Basic (the programming environment Microsoft promotes for the purpose of creating good user interfaces), indulges in too much name-dropping and self-congratulation (Cooper attributes the quote, 'How did you do that?' to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, upon looking at one of Cooper's creations)--but this appears to be de rigueur in books about the software industry. But those asides are minor. More valuable is the discourse about software design and implementation ('[O]bject orientation divides the 1000-brick tower into 10 100-brick towers.'). Read this book for an idea of what's wrong with UI design. --David Wall

Topics covered: User interfaces--good ones and bad ones--and where they come from. Also, how to improve the ones you create.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Appalling
I am a technical manager in the software industry. I am responsible for the SDLC, manage developers, and perform code reviews, while still occasionally contributing code - generally architecture and technical spikes. I mention this because I feel this gives me a good perspective on books like this, as I deal daily with the issues on 'both sides of the fence'. I bought this book sight unseen and without knowing who the author was because it was recommended to me as a 'timeless classic'.

To be honest, I couldn't read it in it's entirety and merely skimmed it. This is without a doubt the worst book I have ever seen on this subject. I read this with a stunned disbelief at what I was reading along with a growing sense of disdain for the author.

Okay, firstly the author has the most intense bias against engineers. In retrospect I realise it should have been obvious from the title (duh!).
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Rating:

- To be taken with a large grain of salt
The Inmates Are Running The Asylum starts off pretty well. It begins with some very good examples of poor design that lead to a bad user experience, as well as just how downright dysfunctional the software development process can be. There is also the beginnings of a thesis on how to solve these problems. From there however, the quality of The Inmates takes a steep nosedive. The deeper into The Inmates you go, the lower the signal-to-noise ratio becomes. Cooper's message gets buried progressively deeper under a heap of sand-kicking diatribes about software engineers, armchair quarterbacking of the designs of others, and thinly veiled plugs for Cooper's particular brand of interaction design consulting.

There are some good ideas in The Inmates, though nothing truly groundbreaking at this point in time. Cooper champions things such as goal oriented design, personae, and primacy of user friendliness. ... Read More

Rating:

- A Must Read Classic, Albeit with Some Dated Ideas
This a classic book that anyone who build computer systems should read. Some of the specific examples are dated, though many caused me to nod in acknowledgment, especially his observations about alarm clocks and TV remotes, Inmates describes goal directed design, the concept of Pesonas, ideas which, whether they make sense for your project are not, are ones that you should be aware of. This book also explains what "polite software" is and emphasizes the market advantages to good interaction design. Even if this book doesn't change the way you work, it will help you think about the relationship between interaction design and programming. Among the interesting points Cooper makes are Customer Driven isn't aways the best model (customer influenced is better), and neither is Engineering Driven; software designers should go beyond customers say they want and help them to understand what they need. There were a few things ... Read More

Rating:

- No Cognitive Friction Here..
Alan Cooper gives the reader insight into why so many of today's technological products frustrate and confuse users. Yet he goes past this to discuss a methodology for keeping it simple and designing for the user i.e. avoiding cognitive friction. This book has changed the way I will develop products and should be a must read for product managers of application developers. Just learning Mr. Cooper's vocabulary is worth the read. The ideas such as personas, keywords, and designing for an individual push the book way above average. This is an easy read that should be done in your spare time if you want to avoid cognitive friction with your users. It has changed the way I view technology and brought a new awareness to thoughtless technology implementation which often cause failure or misuse. The only reason I gave this book a 4 out of 5 as I feel it could have been reduced a little bit more, certain points I felt like ... Read More

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