From the Publisher:
Why are VCRs impossible to program? Why do car alarms make us all crazy at all the wrong times? Why do our computers reprimand us when they screw up? All of these computerized devices are wildly sophisticated and powerful, and they have proliferated our desks, our cars, our homes and our offices. So why are they still so dauntingly complicated to use? 
The highly renowned Alan Cooper, "The Father of Visual Basic," tackles this issue head-on with his new book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum, from Sams Publishing. Cooper believes that powerful and pleasurable software-based products can be created by the simple expedient of designing computer-based products first and then building them. Designing interactive software-based products is a specialty that is as demanding as the construction of these same products, Cooper says. Ironically, building computerized products isn't difficult, they only seem so because our process for making them is out of date. To compound the problem, the costs of badly designed software are incalculable, robbing us of time, customer loyalty, competitive advantage and opportunity. 
The Inmates are Running the Asylum also addresses the societal dangers of what Cooper calls "software apartheid," where otherwise normal people are kept from entering the job market and participating in society because they cannot use computers effectively. While social activists are working hard to break down race and class barriers, technologies are hard at work inadvertently erecting new, bigger ones. "By purposefully designing software-based products to be more human and forgiving, we can automatically make them more inclusive, more class- and color-blind," Cooper writes. 
Using examples from his own work with companies of all sizes, Cooper offers a provocative, insightful and entertaining explanation for this phenomenon. 
He believes that in part, the problem lies in the fact that business executives in the high-tech industry have relinquished their control to the engineers and techies. In the rush to accept the many benefits of the silicon chip, responsibility has been abandoned, and "the inmates have been allowed to run the asylum." The solution, Cooper says, is to harness those talents to create products that will both thrill their users and grow the bottom line. 
The book is written for two new archetypes emerging in contemporary business: "The technology-savvy businessperson," who knows that his success depends on the quality of the information available to him and the sophistication with which he uses it; and "the business-savvy technologist," an entrepreneurial engineer or scientist with a keen business sense and an awareness of the power of information. 


About the Author:
Alan Cooper is the "Father of Visual Basic," according to Mitch Waite, founder of Waite Group Press. In 1994, Bill Gates gave him the rare and coveted Windows Pioneer Award--recognizing how his part in the invention of VB contributed to the success of Microsoft Windows. Cooper's influential book, About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design (IDG Books) has sold over 40,000 since August of 1995. His title continues to sell about 300-400 copies a month. He now leads Cooper Interaction Design, a consulting firm that has created breakthrough interactive product designs for IBM, Sony, Logitech and several Internet/intranet start-ups. 
For twenty years Alan Cooper designed and developed consumer software products including SuperProject, MicroPhone II for Windows, and Microsoft's visual programming user interface for Visual Basic. 
Cooper is a member of the Corporate Design Foundation and American Center for Design. He is a former director of the Association for software Designs Silicon Valley Chapter and a member of the national organization's Board of Directors. 
He is a frequent, opinionated and engaging industry speaker and writer on the topics of user interface and conceptual design.

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

There has been a recent resurgence in the area of explainable artificial intelligence as researchers and practitioners seek to make their algorithms more understandable. Much of this research is focused on explicitly explaining decisions or actions to a human observer, and it should not be controversial to say that looking at how humans explain to each other can serve as a useful starting point for explanation in artificial intelligence. However, it is fair to say that most work in explainable artificial intelligence uses only the researchers' intuition of what constitutes a `good' explanation. There exists vast and valuable bodies of research in philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science of how people define, generate, select, evaluate, and present explanations, which argues that people employ certain cognitive biases and social expectations towards the explanation process. This paper argues that the field of explainable artificial intelligence should build on this existing research, and reviews relevant papers from philosophy, cognitive psychology/science, and social psychology, which study these topics. It draws out some important findings, and discusses ways that these can be infused with work on explainable artificial intelligence.

Explanation in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Social Sciences

i Personasi is an interaction design technique with considerable potential for software product development. In three years of use, our colleagues and we have extended Alan Cooperis technique to make Personas a powerful complement to other usability methods. After describing and illustrating our approach, we outline the psychological theory that explains why Personas are more engaging than design based primarily on scenarios. As Cooper and others have observed, Personas can engage team members very effectively. They also provide a conduit for conveying a broad range of qualitative and quantitative data, and focus attention on aspects of design and use that other methods do not.

/pdf/personas-practice-and-theory-bo1qzdlwt1.pdf

Personas: practice and theory

The concept of user-centred systems design (UCSD) has no agreed upon definition. Consequently, there is a great variety in the ways it is applied, which may lead to poor quality and poor usability in the resulting systems, as well as misconceptions about the effectiveness of UCSD. The purpose of this paper is to propose a definition of UCSD. We have identified 12 key principles for the adoption of a user-centred development process, principles that are based on existing theory, as well as research in and experiences from a large number of software development projects. The initial set of principles were applied and evaluated in a case study and modified accordingly. These principles can be used to communicate the nature of UCSD, evaluate a development process or develop systems development processes that support a user-centred approach. We also suggest activity lists and some tools for applying UCSD.

https://www.it.uu.se/edu/course/homepage/acsd/vt09/Key_principles.pdf

Key Principles for User-Centred Systems Design

This research extends the theory of planned behavior by incorporating gender and age as moderators of user perceptions and individual adoption and sustained use of technology in the workplace. Individual reactions and technology use behavior were studied over a six-month period among 342 workers being introduced to a new software technology application. While previous studies in the literature have reported gender or age differences separately, the pattern of results from the study reported here indicated that gender effects in individual adoption and use of technology differed based on age. Specifically, gender differences in technology perceptions became more pronounced among older workers, but a unisex pattern of results emerged among younger workers. The theory and empirical results are also discussed in relation to the widely employed technology acceptance model. The results from this study suggest that old stereotypes that portray "technology" as a male-oriented domain may be disappearing; particularly among younger workers. In light of these findings, theoretical implications for researchers and practical suggestions for managers are discussed.

/pdf/gender-and-age-differences-in-employee-decisions-about-new-avtq1zmh9f.pdf

Gender and age differences in employee decisions about new technology: an extension to the theory of planned behavior

The inmates are running the asylum

Description Carriers of the fragile X premutation can experience medical conditions of their own Carriers of the fragile X premutation can experience medical conditions of their own

Bill Sullivan

Papers

The inmates are running the asylum

Rethinking genetic disease