BOOK REVIEW: Wrench in the System By Harold Hambrose Wiley; 246pp
EVER WONDER why you have to press the “Start” key in Windows to shut down a PC? Then you will find a kindred spirit in Harold Hambrose, a trained product designer who has worked in the software business for almost 30 years but who believes most business software is profoundly flawed.
The wrench of the title expresses Hambrose’s view of the software used by businesses. It only takes him until page two to baldly lay his cards on the table: “Our experience with information technology has taught us that whenever we plan to install new software, whether it’s a basic word-processing program or a multimillion-dollar enterprise system, the most realistic viewpoint is to hope for the best and to expect the worst.”
Hambrose believes the failing is because the still relatively young information technology industry does not follow traditional methods of product design. Technologists and business evangelists are in such a rush to deploy technology they pay scant regard to how it will be used and whether it will benefit the user.
The author sets out to sketch a different way of doing things that puts product design centre stage. Hambrose, a graduate of the highly regarded design department at Carnegie Mellon University, devotes his first chapter to explaining good design.
Many people say the Apple iPod has great design – meaning it looks good – but Hambrose explains that it’s not just form but ease of use that makes it great: “All great products have one thing in common: they seem to be designed for you.”
The rest of the book is devoted to showing how the IT industry ignores the well-established rules of product design and suggests how they should be integrated into the development process.
Along the way, several myths of the IT industry are exploded. His central thesis is most best-selling software packages are hard because the people who buy and sell them are not the people who use them. In a modern case of the emperor wearing no clothes, senior executives have invested so much time and money into the systems they are not prepared to say they fail to meet expectations. But if the people who use the software were consulted and observed doing their jobs, we would create systems which speak their language, assist them in common tasks and make them more productive.
Software vendors attempt to gloss over obtuse design by offering training for users. Unfortunately, in Hambrose’s experience, this devotes most of its time to teaching people how to handle the vagaries of the system rather than making the user more productive. And, of course, he takes great offence at the word “user” itself – pointing out the illegal drug trade and IT are the only major industries referring to customers as users.
It’s safe to assume the author is no fan of Microsoft’s products, although he admits to having years of experience using Word. Best-selling products from the likes of Oracle and SAP also come in for criticism.
Wrench in the Systemisn't just a critique of what's wrong but also sketches out how designers, psychologists and other specialists who can translate the needs of a user into technical requirements should be consulted every step of the way. All of this may sound like an expensive luxury, particularly now. But Hambrose maintains that good design of software will actually save money by achieving its ultimate goals and costing less to support.
Hambrose also tackles the global recession and has included a chapter on how you can potentially get more out of your existing systems for a fairly small investment. Two similarly practical appendices cover tough questions you should ask consultants and how to tap into the latent design talent you may already have working in your firm.
Hambrose successfully weaves in details of his education and professional career using anecdotes from the past to illustrate how he has arrived at his current position. That’s rarely done so seamlessly in business books and certainly not in the ones that are so heavy on practical advice as Wrench in the System.
If you don’t find it strange that you press Start to stop using Windows and you are involved in buying or specifying software for your company, you owe it to your colleagues to read this book.
John Collins is assistant business editor with
The Irish Times
. He writes about technology for the paper
