It's true that some products have poor interfaces, but in my experience this "problem" is blown way out of proportion with reality. The only people I know who couldn't figure out how to program their VCRs were people who did not try for more than 5 minutes. Read the instructions, both in the book and onscreen, and VCR programming is a snap, from the earliest models to today.

I think the real question should be: Why are so many users so lazy? This is more of a social problem than a technological one. Some think that if any effort is required to learn how to use a new device then it's poorly designed. Poppycock!

I've been a programmer for over 25 years, and I think programmers (including me) should read more books like this. Too often, we're driven by our knowledge of what we can do with our languages, data structures, libraries, frameworks, dialog boxes, fonts, colors, etc. We write what's immediately doable given the tools, and lose sight of what would be most desireable. The results are often useful, but unintuitive, inelegant and painful to use. This is why people complain so much about the interfaces of computers, cell phones, PDAs, VCRs, cars, planes, themostats etc.

Alan Cooper argues that the cause of the problem is the culture that creates the products. Programmers are designing today's user interfaces. They naturally design interfaces that they like, so the interfaces are too technical. Cooper suggests a psychological basis for the underlying problem: programmers tend to be interverts that like complexity, so they like complex interfaces. Most programmers are predisposed to expect the human to adjust to the interface. Humans that can't or won't are considered stupid, so they don't really matter. This is many computer interfaces make us feel stupid. Ew're part of the problem, because when an interface fails, we often blame ourselves.

Cooper goes on to describe how to address the problem. One strategy resonated with me: instead of allowing programmers to think in terms of "the user", make them think in terms of several specific, defined, named "personas". This encourages programmers to imagine real interaction between users and an interface, which improves the thinking about the little details that distinguish a useable, boring, frustrating interface from a pleasant, intuitive, helpful interface.

Af course, Alan Cooper does a much better job describing this than I have. I recommend this book highly.

Haven't ever read a book that tackles this issue so well before, and in such an easy to read fashion

I found this book witty, insightful, and usefully applicable to real situations. Cooper writes about the importance of spending time up front to build good software, even if that means throwing away prototypes in favor of rebuilding and fixing the mistakes.

If everyone in the software industry read and understood this book, I think we'd eventually have (1) a lot less software (because junk products wouldn't even make it out the door) and (2) software that works a lot better than what we have now.

I'm sorry to report that Alan Cooper appears to be years out of touch with the software industry. He lobbies for a new 'interaction design' class of professionals working toward designing how the user sees the system - but the industry started doing these things a good 15-20 years ago. Also, he assertions that "in software, typically nothing is visible until it is done" is just plain wrong today; 20 years ago that was true but the software industry today uses storyboards, paper usability reviews, UI mockups, prototypes, etc all with the intent of designing a user friendly interface before the first line of code is written. He starts off with flawed assumptions and ignorance and goes downhill from there.

For simple entertainment value and getting to vent frustration about bad systems I give the book 1 star, but if you're actually serious about understanding and improving software development, you're much better off reading any of a handful of books about "use case analysis".