An edition of The Trouble with Computers (1995)

The trouble with computers

usefulness, usability, and productivity

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Last edited by MARC Bot
July 16, 2024 | History
An edition of The Trouble with Computers (1995)

The trouble with computers

usefulness, usability, and productivity

  • 0 Ratings
  • 2 Want to read
  • 0 Currently reading
  • 1 Have read

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 two aspects of computer design as the main culprits: usefulness and usability. 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.

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Through task analysis, iterative design, trial use, and evaluation, computer systems can be made into powerful tools for the service economy, with 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. Landauer presents solid evidence for this claim, and for a huge benefit-to-cost ratio for user-centered design activities.

He describes how to accomplish these necessary things, promising applications for better computer software designs in business, and the relation of user-centered design to business process reengineering, quality, and management.

Publish Date
Publisher
MIT Press
Language
English
Pages
425

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The Trouble with Computers
The Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity
June 6, 1996, The MIT Press
Paperback in English - New Ed edition
Cover of: The trouble with computers
The trouble with computers: usefulness, usability, and productivity
1995, MIT Press
in English
Cover of: Trouble with Computers
Trouble with Computers: Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity
1995, MIT Press
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (p. [393]-405) and index.
"A Bradford book."

Published in
Cambridge, Mass

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
659/.0285
Library of Congress
QA76.5 .L3226 1995, QA76.5.L3226 1995, QA76.5 .L3226 1995eb

The Physical Object

Pagination
xiii, 425 p. :
Number of pages
425

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1121936M
Internet Archive
troublewithcompu00land
ISBN 10
0262121867
LCCN
94048745
OCLC/WorldCat
42328780, 31777036
Library Thing
323664
Goodreads
4673437

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Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
July 16, 2024 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
January 16, 2023 Edited by Tom Morris merge authors
January 7, 2023 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
September 28, 2021 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record