Wrench in the System by Harold Hambrose

"A fine new book examines why B2B software doesn't work the way you want it to. Hambrose comes to our collective rescue with an attempt to explain the problem and suggestions for fixing it."

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"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."

"Hambrose reveals what's missing from business systems and helps us understand how to demand, and get, more from these critical investments."

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"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."

"Hambrose’s design perspective is a refreshing alternative to the conventional software development wisdom and should serve as a manifesto for those trying to improve the quality and usability of business applications."

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"Wrench in the System has one powerful message: Businesses need software ‘that sparks excitement in its target community of human users–excitement that their work is easier and more enjoyable, that they have become more effective, and that their employer is supplying tools that make them feel like part of a winning team.' "

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". . .say huzzah to the message in Harold Hambrose’s Wrench in the System. . . . an entertaining argument for a much greater role for designers, psychologists, even anthropologists in creating the complex and all-too-frequently bewildering software used by businesses. It is as if no one had bothered to ask, ‘What does this thing need to do?’ "

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“. . . a highly readable and cogent perspective on the lack of effective design in business software. Hambrose helped lead the growth of user-centered design over the past 20 years, and much of the book is directly drawn from his professional experiences."

"We’ve heard it before, yet so many of us refuse to listen. Good design matters. And the good news with this book is that while pointing out the problems in so much software, Hambrose offers good, solid solutions for how you can improve your software."

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"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 lke Edward Tufte, Harold Hambrose reminds us that great design can change the world."