Have you ever noticed how much most software sucks?  Brad has an alarm clock at home that makes it easier for him to adjust the time by accident than hit the snooze button.  How do products get on the market that make us jump through mental hoops just to use them.  We struggle so much just to use the technology around us that when someone comes out with a product (iPod) that is great, we buy it in droves.  Alan Cooper was a pioneer of the modern computing era and thinks "software should be spanked".  Brad can't wait.

Big Ideas:

• Add a computer to a hardware device (camera) and it takes on the qualities of the computer
• Software developers must think differently in order to be good at their jobs
• This different mindset results in software that can be difficult to use for the rest of us
• Good software design is much more than being pretty, it's about being natural

Books:

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity