The Inmates are Running the Asylum

So I just read this classic in interaction design! Yay. I was expecting to read a how-to, so imagine how I felt when I read this in the intro:

I intended to write a very different book from this one: a how-to book about the interaction-design process. Instead,
in May 1997 on a family visit to Tuscany, my friends Don McKinney and Dave Carlick talked me into this one. They
convinced me that I needed to address a business audience first.

Bummer! I’ve read business books before and they tend to be pedantic and repetitive, full of bite-sized “wisdom” and summaries. But I pressed on. Thank goodness I did, because it pointed out the flaws of then-current business processes from a design point of view. Mainly, Cooper pointed out the need for dedicated designers to take charge of software usability issues before any programming begins.

Given that this was written pre-Y2K, it’s pretty cool to see how much of its predictions has come to pass. For example, interaction design and user experience design are (were?) big buzz words today, and everyone claims to be doing it. Just look where the money goes. A few months ago I took a look at the results of Core77′s annual design salary survey, and it showed a curious trend: interaction designers were earning at rates well above their contemporaries in other design fields, with a sharp dip in the last year. (Sadly, this information is no longer available online. AIGA has information on 2011 salaries though.) I’m guessing the dip shows a return to reality, but still! It just goes to show what a hot field it is, more than 10 years after Cooper’s book came out.

At some points, Cooper pointed out the difference between interface design and interaction design. I’ve heard people use these terms interchangeably, and I suppose the difference is one of emphasis; the former focuses on the visual GUI, whereas the latter emphasizes the GUI’s behaviour. An interface’s behaviour is definitely harder to specify, because it’s a matter of changing states. How do you specify that? With flow charts, Flash animations, PowerPoints, even words… but it does add a layer of complexity.

Anyway, I read in a forum that Cooper Interaction Design (now just Cooper?) was a pioneer of persona-driven design, so the chapters on that were especially enlightening. I’ve used them a couple of times before, and it takes a lot of discipline to make sure they are continually referred to in all aspects of the design. It’s just too easy to make them up to fulfill a course requirement, and then chuck them aside. Next time I make them, I should print their pictures and put them up on a wall or something.

I look forward to getting C’s reaction after he reads it because there’s a lot of developer-bashing in there, haha. (It’s his book, but he hasn’t read it…. long story.)