The Productologist

The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper

I have been meaning to read this seminal text on application development and usability for some time (read: years), but somehow it always ended up on my reading list just below something else. After seeing some others reference the book and discuss conference talks where the author expanded on his theorems, I decided to bump The Inmates are Running the Asylum to the top of the list. After finishing it up, I was surprised, to say the least.

When was the last time you included User Interface (UI) requirements in an MRD? If you are like most Product Managers, you may have included a reference like these in your MRD (I’ll admit to using at least one of them)–

• Need to make the UI easier to use
• The new screens must follow the existing screen design
• Replace old icons with new ones
• Change the colors to match our new logo

Unfortunately, not only are these not easily actionable, but they don’t get to the root requirement, which is how to make the product more clearly understood and easier to use so that the user has a positive experience.