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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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Paperback | 24 February 2004 | Edition Number 2

At a Glance

Paperback
288 Pages

Edition Type
Revised

Dimensions(cm)
28.5 x 20.4 x 9.4

Paperback

$70.75

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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, 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 money, squander customer loyalty, and erode competitive advantage. Business executives have let the inmates run the asylum In his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum Alan Cooper calls for revolution - we need technology to work in the same way average people think - we need to restore the sanity. He 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.

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You Can Find This Book In

Non-Fiction Computing & I.T.Computer Science Human-Computer Interaction Information Technology General Issue Ethical & Social Aspects of IT Virtual Reality Operating Systems Systems Analysis & Design

Foreword
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
The Origins of This Book
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
It Costs You Big Time
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
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
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
Programming Culture at Microsoft
Cultural Isolation
Skin in the Game
Scarcity Thinking
The Process Is Dehumanizing, Not the Technology
Interaction Design is Good Business
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 P@ssport
The Conventional Solution
Personas
Designing for Clevis
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
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

At a Glance

Paperback

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

More in Ethical & Social Aspects of IT

Nexus

A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Careless People

A story of where I used to work

Generative AI in the Social Sciences and Humanities

Navigating Challenges and Opportunities in Research and Education

Artificially Yours

Real Friendship in a World of Chatbots

Data Empire

How information shaped human history

Open to Work

How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI

Doppelganger

A Trip Into the Mirror World

The New Age of Sexism

How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny

Enshittification

Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do about It

Little Blue Dot

How the Global Positioning System Shaped the Modern World

Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

Penguin Modern

Against the Machine

On the Unmaking of Humanity

Gilded Rage

Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

Making Things Happen : Theory in Practice

Mastering Project Management

Enshittification

Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

The Singularity is Nearer

When We Merge with AI

Man-Made

How the bias of the past is being built into the future

The Art of Invisibility

World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data

Product Leadership

How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams

Gilded Rage

Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

Instagram & Facebook All-in-One For Dummies

The New Age of Sexism

How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny

Mood Machine

Music In the Age of Spotify

AI Snake Oil

What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can't, and How to Tell the Difference

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