Personas and Outrageous Software - an Interview with Alan Cooper

I asked Alan Cooper (over a rather echoing connection) why he is outraged by bad software, and how he developed the concept of 'personas'.

I was interested to hear the 'father of Visual Basic' say 'What I need is a computer that doesn't make me feel bad and a cellphone that doesn't make me feel stupid'.

Alan's company is Cooper Consulting (www.cooper.com)

The two books of his that I mentioned are:

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
(www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0672326140/informdesign)

About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design
(www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764526413/informdesign)

This episode is 19 minutes 44 seconds in duration. File size is 11.3MB.