Alan Cooper created Goal-Directed Design methodology, which he introduced in his influential 1998 book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. He also founded Cooper, a leading interaction design consultancy. In his foreword to Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services, he says this about the author:
"Kim Goodwin has been a prime participant in the dialog at Cooper since 1997. She has been one of the major contributors to the development of our design methodology. She is an authority on design, problem scoping, engagement management, and design documentation. Kim has labored in the trenches in a broad variety of design segments, from clinical medicine to conceptual blockbusting. She has led groups of designers, coordinating their work, and synchronizing it with the needs of some very demanding clients.
"And she has taught others to design. Many hundreds of people have gotten a taste of Kim's clarity, patience, thoroughness, and rigor by attending her presentations and at conferences, her one-day field seminars, or her design courses. In fact, Kim has been the primary creator of training content for our very successful Cooper U classes. Over the years, her particular expertise at observation, synthesis, and communication while in charge of other design teams and honed in the classroom, led her to write this book. Much of the content and wisdom gleaned from those classes is evident here."
It is quickly apparent that the book was produced from tried and true application, not just concepts and theory. It is filled with comprehensive examples of real product designs, that not only clearly illustrate the processes, but also gives them enormous credibility. At the same time, the foundation of the book is a deeply held conviction about design and best way to do it.
"Design is the craft of visualizing concrete solutions that serve human needs and goals within certain constraints. Design is a craft because it is neither science nor art, but somewhere in between. In order for design to be design and not art, it must serve human needs and goals. Finally, design always happens within certain constraints."
"Goal-Directed Design encompasses the design of a product's behavior, visual form, and physical form. Its fundamental premise is that the best way to design a successful product is to focus on achieving goals."
"The Goal-Directed method is a set of tools and best practices developed entirely through practice in the real world. The method consists of four components: principles, patterns, process, and practices."
After briefly discussing principles (guidelines for creating good solutions under specific circumstances) and patterns (types of solutions that tend to be useful for certain classes of problems), the book devotes almost 700 pages to a detailed description of process and practices. The process and practices are grouped into seven stages of a design project:
1. Getting Started
2. Research
3. Modeling
4. Requirements
5. Framework
6. Detailed Design
7. Ensuring Success
One of my initial concerns was that the process and practices described require a large team of diverse specialists, which few companies can afford, working over a relatively long total timeline. While the book states that the methodology can be scaled for smaller teams and a shorter timeline, I had my doubts. However, I recently had an opportunity to develop a project plan directly with Cooper for the design of role-based user interfaces for genomics research laboratory software, and I saw, firsthand, that the process can be effectively scaled to address limited resources and tight timelines.
Alan Cooper also writes, "This book is comprehensive in its scope, exhaustive in its depth, authoritative in its practice, and priceless in its wisdom. It will certainly become the anchor document for an entire practice. While I expect to see it on the bookshelves of every practicing designer, I further expect that it will spend the lion's share of its time off the shelf and at the elbow of hard-working designers."
I've read about 60% of the book over 24 months in a non-linear manner, and it is very possible that I will never read the complete book. However, it has taken its place with a select group of books that I refer to constantly for real-world problem solving. This is not a book to read, but rather a book to use, and I strongly recommend it for anyone involved in any function of interaction design.
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 2, 2012
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 19, 2009
Probably the most comprehensive book on current state of a profession of a digital product designer.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 22, 2018
Top reviews from other countries
Mr. L. M. Mcivor
Great overview of UX, methods and approaches
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 25, 2010
E. Chittenden
Great for a UX library
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 16, 2013
