Harold Hambrose's Wrench in the System is a highly readable and cogent perspective on the lack of effective design in business software, in the spirit of Alan Cooper's The Inmates are Running the Asylum.
Hambrose, founder of user interface consulting firm Electronic Ink, essentially lived through and helped lead the growth of user-centered design over the past 20 years, and much of the book is directly drawn from his professional experiences {Disclaimer: I formerly worked for Hambrose as Director of Human Factors at Electronic Ink].
Wrench in the System combines personal narrative, case studies and historical perspective to point out that the creation of business software does not parallel the successful design processes in other industries such as architecture and product design:
"In the race to deploy new information technology, businesses and software developers often have stumbled because they have ignored traditional methods of product development and have seriously miscalculated the risks of developing software without pausing to find out more about how this new technology will be used. The information technology industry, still in its adolescence, has been in too much of a rush to stop and tie its shoelaces."
The book is targeted at business decision makers - CIOs and CEOs, who have the power to demand usable software, but lack the awareness of why it matters. The focus is more specifically on enterprise software - large scale, technology driven, million dollar software systems that are notoriously challenging to use and difficult to change. Hambrose frequently picks on SAP, both explicitly and implicitly - the book even includes a mini-fable called "The Emperor's New Enterprise System".
The majority of Wrench is spent defining the problem with examples from healthcare, financial services, energy, etc. A reader who is already well versed in user-centered design will likely find these examples familiar, and somewhat repetitive. But where Hambrose excels is in articulating the value and impact of design to business, for example:
"It's not a lack of technical know-how or business expertise or even a shortage of time or money that accounts for software's failure to provide the information we need. The source of most of the trouble is a fundamental conflict between human beings and their machines, a conflict that causes profound misunderstanding"
The book itself, with clear typography and substantive paper stock, exemplifies user-centered design, as well as the still evident value of paper over electronic books. It should benefit those sleepy business decision makers who clearly still need it, but it's language and stories will also benefit user-centered design practicioners who can apply its lessons to their own internal and external design sales challenges.
