Wrench in the System: What's Sabotaging Your Business Software and How You Can Release the Power to Innovate

By H. Hambrose

Book Overview

Praise for WRENCH IN THE SYSTEM "Look to Harold Hambrose to make significant contributions to safer health care records through interface design, product design, and data visualization. Wrench in the System should be the bible for corporate executives striving to gain a competitive advantage in these trying times." --Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO, Siegel+Gale "During the short history of computing, interface design has usually been neglected, resulting in software that is cumbersome and counterintuitive. In this book, Harold Hambrose calls for design where 'help' is helpful and where clutter is eliminated. He describes a set of commonsense principles and asserts the essential place of design in superior products. Together with thought leaders like Edward Tufte, Harold Hambrose reminds us that great design can change the world." --Tony Pizi, CIO, Asset Management Platform Services, Deutsche Bank "Making computer information easily available to people in their work can help organizations meet their most important goals. This book recommends adopting traditional methods and procedures of design to do so, and suggests that turning data into accessible information could be a high calling for designers now. I wish we designers were as wise as the author considers us But we, as much as computer users in business, can learn deep lessons from his confrontation of the challenges of information design today, and his demonstration of how our own techniques can apply to meeting them." --Denise Scott Brown, Principal, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, and coauthor, Learning from Las Vegas

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470413433
• ISBN13: 9780470413432
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Not your average business book

Judging this book by its title, "Wrench in the System: What's Sabotaging Your Business Software and How You Can Release the Power to Innovate" you could be forgiven if you thought this would be just another business book. It's not. What the author, Harold Hambrose, has captured is how the software industry has wandered off the path of designing tools; the purpose of which is to meet the needs of users. In fact, through a series of business and personal examples, he shows how the software industry (and those responsible for purchasing software) has never been on the path at all. What Mr. Hambrose demonstrates is that "the path" to creating usable business systems requires the same design process that has historically been used to create the world's most beautiful and useful buildings (think, St. Peter's Basilica) and products (think, the iPod). That process, which requires trained designers and researchers to work collaboratively to discover and understand the needs, habits and requirements of the folks who will ultimately use a piece of software, is the same process used to determine that a church needs to be more than four walls and a roof and that a music player needs to be more than a device you plug headphones into. We, the denizens of corporate cubicles and executive offices alike, should require nothing less of our software and business systems. And if that weren't enough, the author has a written a book that really is an enjoyable read.