Table of Contents
I. COMPUTER OBLITERACY.
1. 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. The
Origins of This Book.
2. 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” Versus “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.
II. IT COSTS YOU BIG TIME.
3. Wasting Money.
Deadline Management. What Does “Done” Look Like? Parkinson's Law.
The Product That Never Ships. Shipping Late Doesn't Hurt. Feature
List Bargaining. Programmers Are in Control. Features Are Not
Necessarily Good. Iteration and the Myth of the Unpredictable
Market. The Hidden Costs of Bad Software. The Only Thing More
Expensive Than Writing Software is Writing Bad Software.
Opportunity Cost. The Cost of Prototyping.
4. The Dancing
Bear.
If it Were a Problem, Wouldn't It Have Been Solved by Now? Consumer
Electronics Victim. How Email Programs Fail. How Scheduling
Programs Fail. How Calendar Software Fails. Mass Web Hysteria.
What's Wrong with Software? Software Forgets. Software is Lazy.
Software is Parsimonious with Information. Software is Inflexible.
Software Blames Users. Software Won't Take
Responsibility.
5. Customer Disloyalty.
Desirability. A Comparison. Time to Market.
III. EATING SOUP WITH A FORK.
6. The Inmates are Running the Asylum.
Driving from the Backseat. Hatching a Catastrophe. Computers Versus
Humans. Teaching Dogs to Be Cats.
7. 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.
8. An Obsolete Culture.
The Culture of Programming. Reusing Code. The Common Culture.
Programming Culture at Microsoft. Cultural Isolation. Skin in the
Game. Scarcity Thinking. The Process is Dehumanizing, Not the
Technology.
IV. INTERACTION DESIGN IS GOOD BUSINESS.
9. Designing for Pleasure.
Personas. Design for Just One Person. The Roll-Aboard Suitcase and
Sticky Notes. The Elastic User. Be Specific. Hypothetical.
Precision, Not Accuracy. A Realistic Look at Skill Levels. Personas
End Feature Debates. Both Designers and Programmers Need Personas.
It's a User Persona, Not a Buyer Persona. The Cast of Characters.
Primary Personas. Case Study: Sony Trans Com's Passport. The
Conventional Solution. Personas. Designing for
Clevis.
10. Designing for Power.
Goals are the Reason Why We Perform Tasks. Tasks Are Not Goals.
Programmers Do Task-Directed Design. Goal-Directed Design.
Goal-Directed Television News. Goal-Directed Classroom Management.
Personal and Practical Goals. The Principle of Commensurate Effort.
Personal Goals. Corporate Goals Practical Goals. False Goals.
Computers Are Human, Too. Designing for Politeness. What is Polite?
What Makes Software Polite? Polite Software is Interested in Me.
Polite Software is Deferential to Me. Polite Software is
Forthcoming. Polite Software has Common Sense. Polite Software
Anticipates My Needs. Polite Software is Responsive. Polite
Software is Taciturn About its Personal Problems. Polite Software
is Well Informed. Polite Software is Perceptive. Polite Software is
Self-Confident. Polite Software Stays Focused. Polite Software is
Fudgable. Polite Software Gives Instant Gratification. Polite
Software is Trustworthy. Case Study: Elemental Drumbeat. The
Investigation. Who Serves Whom. The Design. Pushback. Other
Issues.
11. Designing for People.
Scenarios. Daily Use Scenarios. Necessary Use Scenarios. Edge Case
Scenario. Inflecting the Interface. Perpetual Intermediates.
Pretend it's Magic. Vocabulary. Breaking Through with Language.
Reality Bats Last. Case Study: Logitech Scanman. Malcolm, the
Web-Warrior. Chad Marchetti, Boy. Magnum, DPI. Playing Pretend
It's Magic. World-Class Cropping. World-Class Image Resize.
World-Class Image Reorient. World-Class Results. Bridging Hardware
and Software. Less is More.
V. GETTING BACK INTO THE DRIVER'S SEAT.
12. Desperately Seeking Usability.
The Timing. User Testing. User Testing Before Programming. Fitting
Usability Testing into the Process. Multidisciplinary Teams.
Programmers Designing. How Do You Know? Style Guides. Conflict of
Interest. Focus Groups. Visual Design. Industrial Design. Cool New
Technology. Iteration.
13. A Managed Process.
Who Really Has the Most Influence? The Customer-Driven Death
Spiral. Conceptual Integrity is a Core Competence. A Faustian
Bargain. Taking a Longer View. Taking Responsibility. Taking Time.
Taking Control. Finding Bedrock. Knowing Where to Cut. Making
Movies. The Deal. Document Design to Get it Built. Design Affects
the Code. Design Documents Benefit Programmers. Design Documents
Benefit Marketing. Design Documents Help Documenters and Tech
Support. Design Documents Help Managers. Design Documents Benefit
the Whole Company. Who Owns Product Quality? Creating a
Design-Friendly Process. Where Interaction Designers Come From.
Building Design Teams.
14. Power and Pleasure.
An Example of a Well-Run Project. A Company-Wide Awareness of
Design. Benefits of Change. Let Them Eat Cake. Changing the
Process.
Index.Promotional Information
The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite
appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control
of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers
and engineers in charge, leading to products and processes that
waste huge amounts of money, squander customer loyalty, and erode
competitive advantage. They have let the inmates run the asylum.
Alan Cooper offers a provocative, insightful and entertaining
explanation of how talented people continuously design bad
software-based products. More importantly, he uses his own work
with companies big and small to show how to harness those talents
to create products that will both thrill their users and grow the
bottom line.
About the Author
Alan Cooper is a software author and visionary whose industry
credits include creating the visual programming interface for
Microsoft's Visual Basic. His one-man crusade for better design in
the '90s has evolved into the Cooper Interactive Design firm, which
he founded in 1992. As an industry leader, he is frequently
speaking at computer conferences such as VBITS as well as meeting
with industry leaders to provide guidance and direction.