Book Review: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Title: The Inmates Are Running The Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy And How to Restore the Sanity Author: Alan Cooper Publisher: Sams (1st Edition, April 1999) On-line: amazon.com amazon.co.uk Reviewed by Matt Stephens May 3, 2003

Published back in April 1999, Alan Cooper's book is a must-read for project managers, developers and their customers. It makes a very important point about software design (where "design" in this case means interaction design) - that programmers are not the best people to do it.

In fact, programmers (of which I am one) are probably the last people who should be designing the way that software and humans interact - because there is a big conflict of interest. Programmers tend to design software to conform to their own idea of what makes great software. This is often strikingly different from what the users would regard as great software - typically users require software that is eminently useful, and both obvious and easy to use. Software of this type tends to be more difficult to create: so more often than not, users are lumbered with software that is difficult to use, and not entirely suited to getting the job done. In other words, software is rarely focussed on the goals of the users.

"The Inmates" of the title refers to the way in which many software companies are effectively run by the programmers. Management might plan ahead and decide that software will be ready by a certain date; but it's really the programmers who grind their heels in - the software will be finished when they're finished. Similarly, organisations that are too programmer-centric tend to focus the design of the product itself around the programmers.

Programmers love features; so they design the product to be rich in features. Somewhere along the way, the team loses sight of what they are really trying to achieve - something to help the users get a job done. Ironically, throwing more and more "cool" features into the mix makes a product less and less useable.

Development methodologies and techniques that focus on user goals (such as use cases) help a lot in making software more focussed on the user's needs. Interaction design as described by Cooper (defining goals, tasks and personas) can be used in conjunction with use cases to produce software that is much more likely to be useful for the target users.

Some of the reader reviews on amazon.com make amusing reading - many are from programmers who appear to have taken great offence from Cooper's statements. But then the book wouldn't really have done its job properly if he hadn't trodden on some toes in the process.

Also check out Alan Cooper's latest title: About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design

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