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title:: Books / The Inmates Are Running the Asylum type:: book purchased:: Dec 14th, 2019 start:: Dev 14th, 2019 end:: published:: length:: author:: @Alan Cooper cover:: - - Thoughts - Software abstraction are lawless. Design has to make it human. - Ideas - Software apartheid - Cognitive friction - - Progressive Summarizations - Software apartheid. How Inmates Are Running the Asylum collapsed:: true - The high-tech industry has inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, so their hard-to-use engineering culture dominates. Despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. - It is the engineers who are running the show. In our rush to accept the many benefits of the silicon chip, we have abdicated our responsibilities. We have let the inmates run the asylum. - When the inmates run the asylum, it is hard for them to see clearly the nature of the problems that bedevil them. - When you look in the mirror, it is all too easy to single out your best features and overlook the warts. - **Programming is such a difficult and absorbing task that it dominates all other considerations, including the concerns of the user.** collapsed:: true - When the creators of software-based products examine their handiwork, they overlook how bad it is. Instead, they see its awesome power and flexibility. They see how rich the product is in features and functions. They ignore how excruciatingly difficult it is to use, how many mind-numbing hours it takes to learn, or how it diminishes and degrades the people who must use it in their everyday lives. - To be a good programmer, one must be sympathetic to the nature and needs of the computer. But the nature and needs of the computer are utterly alien from the nature and needs of the human being who will eventually use it. The creation of software is so intellectually demanding, so all-consuming, that programmers must completely immerse themselves in an equally alien thought process. In the programmer's mind, the demands of the programming process not only supersede any demands from the outside world of users, but the very languages of the two worlds are at odds with each other. - The process of programming subverts the process of making easy-to-use products for the simple reason that the goals of the programmer and the goals of the user are dramatically different. - The programmer wants the construction process to be smooth and easy. The user wants the interaction with the program to be smooth and easy. These two objectives almost never result in the same program. In the computer industry today, the programmers are given the responsibility for creating interaction that makes the user happy, but in the unrelenting grip of this conflict of interest, they simply cannot do so. - In software, typically nothing is visible until it is done, meaning that any second-guessing by nonprogrammers is too late to be effective. Desktop-computer software is infamously hard to use because it is purely the product of programmers; nobody comes between them and the user. Objects such as phones and cameras have always had a hefty mechanical component that forces them into the open for review. But as we've established, when you cross a computer with just about any product, the behavior of the computer dominates completely. - Programmers aren't evil. They work hard to make their software easy to use. Unfortunately, their frame of reference is themselves, so they only make it easy to use for other software engineers, not for normal human beings - we are inadvertently creating a divided society. The upper class is composed of those who have mastered the nuances of differentiating between "RAM" and "hard disk." The lower class consists of those who treat the difference as inconsequential. - Yet virtually all contemporary software forces its users to confront a file system, where your success is fully dependent on knowing the difference between RAM and disk. - Most product managers that I have worked with would rather ship a failure on time than risk going late. - programmers would define "precision" as a list of features. These feature lists allowed programmers to shift the blame to management when the product failed to live up to expectations. They could say, "It wasn't my fault. I put in all the features management wanted." - The programmers draw a dividing line midway through the list. Items above it will be implemented, they declare, while those below the "line of death" are postponed or eliminated. - Despite appearances, programmers are completely in control of this bottom-up decision-making process. They are the ones who establish how long it will take to implement each item, so they can force things to the bottom of the list merely by estimating them long. - Users only care about achieving their goals. - - Bloatware and complex software products collapsed:: true - the number-one goal of all computer users is to not feel stupid. - Regarding my car's remote keyless entry system, I seriously doubt that any designer asked himself, "Which and how many functions are appropriate?" Instead, I'm certain that some junior engineer chose an off-the-shelf chip that coincidentally came with two channels. After using one of them to lock and unlock, he found himself with a free surplus channel. - The engineer—possibly under the influence of an enthusiastic but ill-informed marketing manager—concocted the rationale that manually setting off the alarm would serve some purpose. He was proud of his ability to provide additional functionality for no apparent cost. - To software makers, it seems virtually free to add features, so any proposed feature is assumed to be a good investment until proven otherwise. Without a governor, the product rapidly fills up with unwanted features, which means complexity and confusion for the user. - An old-fashioned mechanical alarm clock has always been considered easy to operate. A contemporary, software-based alarm clock can be harder to work than a car. - it is surprising how many nontechnical users who are abused daily by bad interaction will excuse their oppressors by saying things like, "Oh, it's easy. I just have to remember to press these two keys, then give the system a valid name. If I forget what I called it, the system will let me look for it." They don't see how ludicrous it is for the system to "let them look for it." Why doesn't the computer do the looking, or the remembering? - **"Power user" is a code name for an apologist.** - It is easy to picture the exhausted programmer chugging Coca-Cola, grinning, and saying, "Yeah, the fetch logic caused the crash, but only when the main heap grew beyond 64 meg; otherwise the cache wasn't activated. Almost couldn't find it!" He's having fun! This is where apologists come from. - The climber is apologizing for the steepness and difficulty of the cliff. The computer enthusiast apologizes for the obscurity and difficulty of the software interaction. - At the other pole are the survivors. They know that something is radically wrong, but they don't know what. - The apologists say, "Look what the computer lets me do!" The survivors say, "I guess I'm just too stupid to understand these newfangled machines." The apologists say, "Look at this! A dancing bear!" The survivors say, "I need something that dances, so I guess a bear is the best I'm gonna get." - The apologists point enthusiastically to all of the information and services that are now available online. Meanwhile, the survivors sit staring at their computer screens wondering how to find anything that might be of use to them. They wait endlessly for Web sites to download unnecessary pictures while still letting them get lost in complex hierarchies of unwanted information. The Web is probably the biggest dancing bear we've ever faced. - - Jobs to be done test collapsed:: true - Interaction designer Scott McGregor uses a delightful test in his classes to prove this point. He describes a product with a list of its features, asking his class to write down what the product is as soon as they can guess. He begins with 1) internal combustion engine; 2) four wheels with rubber tires; 3) a transmission connecting the engine to the drive wheels; 4) engine and transmission mounted on metal chassis; 5) a steering wheel. By this time, every student will have written down his or her positive identification of the product as an automobile, whereupon Scott ceases using features to describe the product and instead mentions a couple of user goals: 6) cuts grass quickly and easily; 7) comfortable to sit on. From the five feature clues, not one student will have written down "riding lawnmower." You can see how much more descriptive goals are than features. - - Random Highlights - Playing a violin is extremely difficult but low in cognitive friction because—although a violinist manipulates it in very complex and sophisticated ways—the violin never enters a "meta" state in which various inputs make it sound like a tuba or a bell. The violin's behavior is always predictable—though complex—and obeys physical laws, even while being quite difficult to control. - To deliver both power and pleasure to users, interaction designers think first conceptually, then in terms of behavior, and last in terms of interface. - Big machinery was always isolated from the public and was operated by trained professionals in uniform. The information age changed everything, and we now expect amateurs to manage technology far more complex than our parents ever faced. - Power users are simply apologists. They are techno-enthusiasts who have sufficiently overcome their better instincts to be useful consumers of high-cognitive-friction products. They take pride in the challenge, as they might in the challenge of scaling a rock wall in Yosemite. - Having a computer-literate customer base makes the development process much easier—of that there can be no doubt—but it hampers the growth and success of the industry and of society. - I am not saying that you cannot learn from trial and error, but those trials should be informed by something more than random chance and should begin from a well-thought-out solution, not an overnight hack. - title:: Books / The21 Inmates Are Running the Asylum -