The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
By Alan Cooper

get  it

A extremely good overview about why most high-tech products are so frustrating to use and the value of paying attention to user experience. It's perhaps best at dissecting the issues of corporate politics that user experience architects have to contend with. Cooper gives an overview of his extremely useful personas and scenaros technique but it's not covered in as much depth as it could be.

Table of Contents

• » Computer Obliteracy
  • » Riddles for the Information Age
    • » What Do You Get When You Cross A Computer With an Airplane
    • » What Do You Get When You Cross A Computer With a Camera
    • » What Do You Get When You Cross A Computer With an Alarm Clock
    • » What Do You Get When You Cross A Computer With a Car
    • » What Do You Get When You Cross A Computer With a Bank
    • » Computers Make It Easy to Get into Trouble
    • » Commercial Software Suffers Too
    • » What Do You Get When You Cross A Computer With a Warship
    • » Techno-Rage
    • » An Industry in Denial
  • » Cognitive Friction
    • » Behavior Unconnected to Physical Forces
    • » Design is a Big Word
    • » The Relationship Between Programmers and Designers
    • » Most Software is Designed by Accident
    • » "Interaction" vs. "Interface" Design
    • » Why Software-Based Products are Different
    • » The Dancing Bear
    • » The Cost of Features
    • » Apologists and Survivors
    • » How We React to Cognitive Friction
    • » The Democratization of Consumer Power
    • » Blaming the User
    • » Software Apartheid
• » It Costs You Big Time
  • » Wasting Money
    • » Deadline Management
    • » What Does "Done" Look Like
    • » Shipping Late Doesn't Hurt
    • » Feature List Bargining
    • » Features Are Not Necessarily Good
    • » Iteration and the Myth of the Unpredictable Market
    • » The Hidden Costs of Bad Software
    • » The Costs of Prototyping
  • » The Dancing Bear
    • » If It Were Problem, Wouldn't It Have Been Solved by Now?
    • » Consumer Electronics Victims
    • » How Email Programs Fail
    • » How Scheduling Programs Fail
    • » How Calendar Software Fails
    • » Mass Web Hysteria
    • » What's Wrong with Software
  • » Customer Disloyalty
    • » Desirability
    • » A Comparison
    • » Time to Market
• » Eating Soup with a Fork
  • » The Inmates are Running the Asylum
    • » Driving from the Backseat
    • » Hatching a Catastrophe
    • » Computers Versus Humans
    • » Teaching Dogs to be Cats
  • » Homo Logicus
    • » The Jetway Test
    • » The Psychology of Computer Programmers
    • » Programmers Trade Simplicity for Control
    • » Programmers Exchange Success for Understanding
    • » Programmers Focus on What Is Possible to the Exclusion of What Is Probable
    • » Programmers Act Like Jocks
  • » An Obsolete Culture
    • » The Culture of Programming
    • » Reusing Code
    • » The Common Culture
    • » Cultural Isolation
    • » Skin in the Game
    • » The Process Is Dehumanizing, Not the Technology
• » Interaction Design is Good Business
  • » Designing for Pleasure
    • » Personas
    • » Design for Just One Person
    • » The Elastic User
    • » Be Specific
    • » Hypothetical
    • » Precision, Not Accuracy
    • » A Realistic Look at Skill Levels
    • » Personas End Feature Debates
    • » It's a User Persona, Not a Buyer Persona
    • » The Cast of Characters
    • » Primary Personas
    • » Case Study: SonyTrans Com's P@ssport
  • » Designing for Power
    • » Goals Are the Reasons We Perform Tasks
    • » Tasks Are Not Goals
    • » Goal-Directed Design
    • » Personal and Practical Goals
    • » Personal Goals
    • » Corporate Goals
    • » Practical Goals
    • » False Goals
    • » Computers are Human, Too
    • » Designing for Politeness
    • » What Makes Software Polite
    • » Case Study: Elemental Drumbeat
  • » Designing for People
    • » Scenarios
    • » Daily Use Scenarios
    • » Necessary Use Scenarios
    • » Edge Case Scenarios
    • » Inflecting the Interface
    • » Prepetual Intermediates
    • » Vocabulary
    • » Reality Bats Last
    • » Case Study: Logitech Scanman
    • » Bridging Hardware and Software
    • » Less is More
• » Getting Back into the Driver's Seat
  • » Desparately Seeking Usability
    • » The Timing
    • » User Testing
    • » Multidisciplinary Teams
    • » Programmers Designing
    • » How Do You Know?
    • » Style Guides
    • » Focus Groups
    • » Visual Design
    • » Industrial Design
    • » Cool New Technology
    • » Iteration
  • » A Managed Process
    • » Who Really Has the Most Influence?
    • » Finding Bedrock
    • » Making Movies
    • » The Deal
    • » Who Owns Product Quality?
    • » Creating a Design-Friendly Process
  • » Power and Pleasure
    • » An Example of a Well-Run Project
    • » A Company-Wide Awareness of Design
    • » Benefits of Change
    • » Let Them Eat Cake

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Reviewed June 5, 2001

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