Alan Cooper - Questions after his keynote | Charles

Zeo
Channel 9 :)

I've always wanted to know more about the patterns and practice group at Microsoft.

I've read many of their white papers and prescriptive guidance papers but I've always wondered about who exactly makes up the group (are they all deep CS PHD research candidates?) because they seem to publish scary smart stuff that has really great technical breath and depth.

The video didn't answer that question so much it highlighted one of the group's core principles of giving real world guidance about deep technical engineering issues.

Best lines from the video.

"USERS DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY WANT."

Amen to that.

"Software is too complex, to difficult, to costly to let users have anything to do with it!"

Question: "What's the first step along the path out of the death march world?

Answer: Admitting there is a problem and admitting that it's a solvable problem. It's like saying I'm an alcoholic.

I agree with him in many ways....although I bet Jamie strongly disagrees.

I love the kindergarden analogy. Big Smile

I'm going to use the broken arm analogy in the future because its a great clear analogy.

He said "Never show users prototypes"....hmm I disagree with him there, but then again what do I know?

Great comment Robert about throwing out code with Longhorn.

I'm not familair with the Access history he spoke about, anyone know more about what exactly took place?

Some of his thoughts seem to be rather out there. Changing accounting principles....never going to happen. Never. Anyone know of any articles about this idea out there I'd love to learn more and re-evaluate my position?

The alcoholic comment makes me laugh....All of us software people are alcoholics...and on top of being alcoholics we're also code addicts.

Really great coversation.

Thanks for capturing it on video channel9.

The guy who got his book signed. Very funny. I guess you could put it on ebay and get millions for it. Tongue Out

Scoble where was this video taken? In the Microsoft Conference center?

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

I don't get it, he is in SW biz and does not know what C9 is or who Robert is with the vid camera and tells you to turn it off only after you tell him you walk around MS with a video camera? I think you said that up front. Much of that was crazy talk. Some was right. Thing is, you can't go to a user after a year of work and only then see if works for them. Isn't that the kind of thing people are moving away from for that exact reason?

dahat

With his line of:

Alan Cooper wrote:
The thing is that the users don’t know, you can’t get blood from a stone, users are got a good source of software, you’ve got to have software built by experts, and you’ve got to have software designed by experts. Software is too complicated and too big and too costly and too difficult to let users have anything to do with it.

Alan has nearly reached the level of being one of my heros.
Now... when he writes a book that I agree with to the point that I do as Atlas Shrugged... then he may achieve full hero status... until then... wow!

I must also remember not to utter such a line near one of my bosses or one of my internal (non expert) customers for fear of getting axed.

DotNutz

Wow

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Yeah, that was shot inside our conference center. Building 33.

Oh, Alan knows me very well. He asked me to turn off the camera so that he could have a private conversation with me.

He is a God in my eyes, though. Having conversations with him after conferences is always interesting.

The problem with this video is it is a bit out of context. You need to hear Alan's whole schtick to understand what he means when he says you shouldn't let customers design things.

He's absolutely right, by the way.

Shark_M

This guy is scary !

iStation
Fuujin

I hope he'll write a book titled "The Visual Studio Chronicles"
as a software version of Rob Colwell's "The Pentium Chronicles."
Wink

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

I disagree with you. Customers don't know what they want.

Did you know you wanted an iPod before you saw it?

The best design is done when you actually just study what users are doing.

But, Alan's comments are a bit out of context.

To learn more about what he means (and how he designs) I highly suggest reading some of his books on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Cooper

mwirth

he does have that ballmer vibe, though! quite inspiring. i found that to be one of the most interesting videos on channel9 at least for the last few months. got to watch it again... cooper's views seemed quite radical to me (which i like in this case)... his views of the clash of management and tech guys i suspect do reflect reality quite well, sadly. sometimes i think this gap is even bigger in companies where software isn't their primary product, where there 's only an IT department for internal development. for the financial guys the IT department is just another cost factor to be minimized.
management gets the nice big flat screens first Wink

in the words of Charles: outstanding video!

- martin