http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Cooper,_Alan A bibliography of works by Cooper, Alan in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Cooper,_Alan http://tc.eserver.org/35506.html http://tc.eserver.org/35506.html The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, published in 1998, introduced the use of personas as a practical interaction design tool. Based on the single-chapter discussion in that book, personas rapidly gained popularity in the software industry due to their unusual power and effectiveness. Had personas been developed in the laboratory, the full story of how they came to be would have been published long ago, but since their use developed over many years in both my practice as a software inventor and architectural consultant and the consulting work of Cooper designers, that is not the case. Since Inmates was published, many people have asked for the history of Cooper personas, and here it is. http://tc.eserver.org/26080.html http://tc.eserver.org/26080.html Some of the most common myths about Web design follow. These myths have found their way into business and technical organizations, and are--to some degree or other--taken at face value by management, marketing, engineering, and sometimes even Web designers themselves. The sooner you can disabuse your organization of these myths, the better. http://tc.eserver.org/26078.html http://tc.eserver.org/26078.html The classic rules of business management are rooted in the manufacturing traditions of the industrial age. Unfortunately, they have yet to address the new realities of the information age, in which products are no longer made from atoms but are mostly software, made only from the arrangements of bits. http://tc.eserver.org/23986.html http://tc.eserver.org/23986.html It takes research, humility, and skill to truly understand your customers well enough to serve them better than your competitors. http://tc.eserver.org/24003.html http://tc.eserver.org/24003.html Iteration without a good design foundation is a very risky method. http://tc.eserver.org/23965.html http://tc.eserver.org/23965.html <i>The Inmates Are Running the Asylum</i>, published in 1998, introduced the use of personas as a practical interaction design tool. Based on the single-chapter discussion in that book, personas rapidly gained popularity in the software industry due to their unusual power and effectiveness. Had personas been developed in the laboratory, the full story of how they came to be would have been published long ago, but since their use developed over many years in both my practice as a software inventor and architectural consultant and the consulting work of Cooper designers, that is not the case. Since Inmates was published, many people have asked for the history of Cooper personas, and here it is. http://tc.eserver.org/24000.html http://tc.eserver.org/24000.html The great promise of the information age is that computers help us to do everything. The great tragedy of the information age is that computers obstruct everything we do. http://tc.eserver.org/18661.html http://tc.eserver.org/18661.html The artless Websites created during the Web's infancy were of necessity built only with simple HTML tags, and were forced to divide up their functionality and content into a maze (a web?) of separate pages. This made a navigation scheme an unavoidable component of any Website design, and of course, a clear, visually arresting navigation scheme was better than an obscure or hidden one. But many Web designers have incorrectly deduced from this that users want navigation schemes. Actually, they'd be happy if there were no navigation at all. http://tc.eserver.org/13905.html http://tc.eserver.org/13905.html What was intended to be an Interview immediately became an audience with the master. It became difficult to slide in the questions as Cooper began to tear up the rulebook for the technology industry and throw it out. He discusses why Interaction Design is about complete systems architecture and he hits on what's wrong with relational databases; what's wrong with file systems; why Interaction Design is a lot more than Interface Design; and why he really doesn't like Usability much either. http://tc.eserver.org/10282.html http://tc.eserver.org/10282.html People in the computer industry frequently toss around the term 'computer literacy.' They talk about how some people have it and some don't; about how those who have it will succeed in the information age and those who lack it will fall between the social and economic cracks of the new age. But computer literacy is nothing more than a euphemism for making the computer user stretch to reach an information age appliance rather than having the appliance stretch to meet the user.