The inmates are running the asylum

by Alan Cooper

Published in 2004

Taken from the introduction in Alan’s book:

“Humans designed the interfaces we hate; humans continue to use dysfunctional machines even as the awkward interfaces strain their eyes, ache their backs, and ruin their wrists. We all are, as the title of this book suggests, the inmates running the techno-asylum of our own creation.

This book is a guide to our escape. Or rather, Alan Cooper reveals the door to the asylum lies wide open… the secret lies in redefining the way we interact with our computers in a larger context.”

Paul Saffo, Director, Institute for the future

I tend to agree with this book summary here that at least the first 4 chapters are now somewhat out-if-date, so I sort of waded through them. Also as a recent graduate from a UX Diploma I’m hoping that the need to make the case for an interaction designer within companies is reducing…!

I am copying from the review linked above which summaries the content as follows:

“Chapter 5 describes the complementary roles of design, engineering, and business acumen in successful businesses. Chapters 6-8 make the case for interaction designers being a distinct field that can’t easily be filled by industrial designers, visual designers, marketers or programmers. There is a particular focus on the problems of developers designing the code that they’re implementing. Chapters 9-11 are a high level view of the principals of interaction design. Finally chapters 12-14 describe what implementing design into a software culture looks like. There is a ton of great content in these chapters.”

It’s such an informed book that it’s one I shall need to return to a few times. I do think I’ve gained a good understanding of the different worlds of programming and design (along with a short course I did called “Understanding Software”) and the principles he lays are are definitely reiterated in several other learning mediums I have devoured since!