The Inmates Are Running The Asylum (Chapters 1-7)

Summary:

This book has primarily been focused on interaction design. In these first few chapters several topics have been discussed related to this general theme including the encroachment of computers into all other devices, the struggle with interacting with computers, the value of interaction design on a company/market scale, the typical design problems in software and the development of software, the importance of interaction design to the success of a product, the influence of software engineers and their misguided mindset of design, and the psychology of the common computer programmer.

The author has used several analogies to illustrate his ideas, a very common one being his 'dancing bear' analogy. This 'dancing bear' illustrates a user's tolerance of bad quality design with the satisfaction of a software's primary purpose, ie the crappy dancing of the bear and the fact that a bear is able to dance all together. Another analogy that shares the title with this book is 'the inmates are running the asylum'. This is in reference to the fact that interaction design is generally left up to the software developers, and because of the influence of their decisions they are often left in charge of the outcome of a product albeit their lack of understanding the importance of design through every level of development.

In some of the latest chapters the author has included more and more excerpts from colleagues and friends who have had first hand experience with the need to invest in the importance of interaction design. Several of these cases were about a possible product that although was 'capable' and 'viable', lacked the 'desirable' trait that users value immensely. In these examples the companies that did not implement a strong sense of design either saw their product fall short of every being released or saw their product fall to the way side in the market by disloyal customers who switched to the competition's product.

Discussion:
So far this reading hasn't been too bad. It really follows in suit with the first book we read. I guess considering this class is based on interaction then that is most likely the content of all the books we will be reading. On a template scale though, this book is really similar to the prior; discussing interaction, the focus on the user, including several analogies and examples to illustrate their points, etc. I wonder if this book will conclude with how to incorporate good interaction design into software development, because so far it has only been highlighting the issues surrounding it. One last note that I want to add is that I think we should have read this book in its entirety instead of splitting it up. It took me about four hours to read these first seven chapters and if we have to wait three weeks to read the rest I'm going to have a hard time remembering all of this. Not to mention we are breaking it up with another book to read in between this one, which I foresee causing me to lose my grasp on the ideals of this book. Oh and another I particularly liked was his discussion about Microsoft, Apple, and Novell; there pros and cons as a business and the resulting status of where they are now because of their experiences.