Review: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

I finally got around to finishing The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. It is a pity that I only read this book now since many (or dare I say most) of the concepts, principles and theories in this book should be known to anyone who would want to call himself an Interaction Designer. It would have had a much bigger impact on my had I read this classic 2 or 3 years ago.

I can, however, recommend this book to anyone who is not an Interaction Designer or to first years students who are just getting into this business. It provides solid arguments why we shouldn’t dive head first into programming and why a proper plan or Interaction Design is needed before writing the first line of code. If anything, it reinforced some of the ideas I had. It also left me amazed that products such as the Dancing Bearware described in the first part of the book can still be found, mostly abundant on any new installation of Windows (not referring to the OS itself, but all the programs usually bundled with it).

So, if you are not really an Interaction Designer but involved in the software (web applications or sites included) business, go and read this Interaction Design classic.