The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Everyone who has ever stood in line as a clerk [and] fussed over a finicky, computerized check-out machine, or wondered why computers seem to complicate life instead of simplifying it, will appreciate Landauer's cleanly argued and thoroughly readable book."
—Elizabeth Corcoran, Washington Post

Product Description

"Everyone who has ever stood in line as a clerk [and] fussed over a finicky, computerized check-out machine, or wondered why computers seem to complicate life instead of simplifying it, will appreciate Landauer's cleanly argued and thoroughly readable book." -- Elizabeth Corcoran, Washington Post

Despite enormous investments in computers over the last twenty years, productivity in the very service industries at which they were aimed virtually stagnated everywhere in the world.

If computers are not making businesses, organizations, or countries more productive, then why are we spending so much time and money on them? Cutting through a raft of technical data, Thomas Landauer explains and illustrates why computers are in trouble and why massive outlays for computing since 1973 have not resulted in comparable productivity payoffs. Citing some of his own successful research programs, as well as many others, Landauer offers solutions to the problems he describes.

While acknowledging that mismanagement, organizational barriers, learning curves, and hardware and software incompatibilities can play a part in the productivity paradox, Landauer targets individual utility and usability as the main culprits. He marshals overwhelming evidence that computers rarely improve the efficiency of the information work they are designed for because they are too hard to use and do too little that is sufficiently useful. Their many features, designed to make them more marketable, merely increase cost and complexity. Landauer proposes that emerging techniques for user-centered development can turn the situation around. Through task analysis, iterative design, trial use, and evaluation, computer systems can be made into powerful tools for the service economy.

Landauer estimates that the application of these methods would make computers have the same enormous impact on productivity and standard of living that were the historical results of technological advances in energy use (the steam engine, electric motors), automation in textiles and other manufacture, and in agriculture. He presents solid evidence for this claim, and for a huge benefit-to-cost ratio for user-centered design activities backed by descriptions of how to do these necessary things, of promising applications for better computer software designs in business, and of the relation of user-centered design to business process reengineering, quality, and management.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 440 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (June 6, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262621088
• ISBN-13: 978-0262621083
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,150,124 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still true today, April 1, 2001

By	SunByrne (Pearland, TX United States) - See all my reviews

Despite the claims of other reviewers, the evidence that the situation described in Landauer's book has improved since the surge in the internet and its sub-technologies (e.g., the Web) is absent. I'd refer the interested reader to a recent article in the New Yorker entitled "The Productivity Mirage" (J. Cassidy) to see some interesting numbers that bear on this question.

It's not that IT investment doesn't result in productivity gains for some individuals, but that there's little evidence that it does much for most organizations as a whole. This is a point critics often miss, because most critics are computer-savvy and subjectively feel like they're more productive as a result of their computer use.

Most of the problems outlined by Landauer still plague current information systems. This book is a must-read for anyone serious about user interface or IT productivity.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars cogent and constructive, March 24, 2000

By	HPprinter (New York) - See all my reviews

"The Trouble with Computers" is an eye-opening book, clearly giving a case for the thesis: Computers are difficult to use because insufficient effort is made to test programs for usability (i.e. how easy a program is for a human to use, not just whether it performs technically as expected by the programmers). Great improvements can be made with even modest testing with typical users.

He gives wonderful examples of computers' being less useful than they could be. One of my favorites: After hundreds or thousands of years, humanity learned to replace inefficient-to-read scrolls with easily-turned pages. When computers arrived, we went back to scrolling.

His assertion that computers hindered productivity growth is bound to irritate people and garner some negative reviews. However, this book is a very constructive one--he states and bolsters this surprising assertion and then tells us what we can do to improve the situation. Having worked in technical support for years, a branch of the booming high-tech economy which owes its existence to the difficulty of using computers, I find it amusing that anyone would dispute the thesis that computers could be made much easier to use. I highly recommend this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Debunks the myth that computers always improve things., November 10, 1997

By	[e-mail] (Silver Spring, MD) - See all my reviews

Landauer has good credentials to be talking about what's wrong with computers. He talks about the two main phases in computer history: 1)The 50s and 60s where bookkeepers were replaced in great numbers and 2) The 70s and 80s when word processors and spreadsheets came of age. He says that the productivity improvements in the first phase are obvious, but the results from the 2nd are dubious in terms of economic gain. He does point to a few big recent successes such as the communications industry. This book came out just before the Web became big, however. Landauer describes software testing methods in detail and believes better testing could make the difference in current software user productivity. He includes lots of memorable statements, at least to programmer types. He mentions that nowadays many people do things with computers simply because they can, not because it makes sense. He also points out how people pump money into PCs getting them to do things badly, which are easy and cheap to do by other means, just because they are so amazed a computer can do them.