zational culture, including issues of power and ownership of 85491-0.) the prototype within the organization. Examples used in this chapter range widely, from discussion of the use of clay models in the American automobile industry to the use of prototyping Bringing Design to Software is an excellent introductory tool kits for software design. Prototyping is the most successful collection of essays, interviews, and case studies that focus upon of the user-centered design techniques and has been widely the challenges of applying the principles of good design to the adopted as a technique for testing goodness of fit between softdevelopment of software. The book grew out of a 1992 meeting ware and its intended users. Both ''Reflective Conversation with whose objective was to define the meaning of the term ''soft-Materials,'' by Donald Scho Β¨n and John Bennett, and ''Footware design.'' The chapters in this book reveal how difficult a holds for Design,'' by Shahaf Gal, emphasize the importance task that is. The book can offer neither a succinct definition of of the interplay between materials and the designer. The metasoftware design nor a canonical method for designing successful phor is that of a conversation, where materials like wood and software. Instead, it provides insights into what software design metal, or an object like a system interface, are the medium can be, by presenting the perspectives of a number of respected rather than words. Designers in any discipline meander toward practitioners, researchers, and educators. successful design, using a complex iterative process of making Winograd's intent is to bring together work that introduces choices, experimenting with materials and objects, and then and organizes important themes in the emerging discipline of reflecting upon all of the previous decisions and experimental software design. In the introduction, Winograd compares softresults. The first choices made constrain what can initially be ware design to architecture, another long-established design disbuilt and how it can be built. Reflection on the process suggests cipline. His purpose in this is to illustrate the complex nature alternative decisions or materials, or even alternative processes. of each enterprise. Both architecture and software design draw These reflections motivate the next round of decision making upon a variety of skills ranging from the analytical world of and experimentation. The use of prototypes, which are experiaxioms, theorems, and proof (how to hold up a roof, or the mental objects created by the designer for use and critique by design of efficient, robust algorithms) to the less controllable the users, is one kind of material that can facilitate conversation world of humans acting in context, intuition, and tacit knowlbetween inhabitants of the application domain and the designers. edge (choosing metaphors or developing a design language for
Another key concern of both the meeting and the book is a software system). He makes his own allegiances clear when the education and training of software design professionals. he says of software designers: ''We approach software users as Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, inhabitants, focusing on . . . how they live in the spaces that claims that the concern of the software designer is to ''create designers create. Our goal is to situate the work of the designer usable computer-based artifacts'' (p. 6) and that this is distinct in the world of the user'' (p. xvii). Software design, then, is from the goals of the computer scientist (contributing to a theohuman-centered, not technology-centered, and it is not based retical discipline) and the software engineer (construction of upon the application of traditional computer science methods, software systems from an engineering perspective). Kapor goes such as structured or object-oriented design, or mainstream softon to state that software designers should be trained in a studioware engineering methods.
like environment where they work on directed projects. While The structure of the book itself is interesting and reinforces Kapor's distinctions between software design, computer scithe intent of each of the authors. There are 14 chapters, which ence, and software engineering are clearly overstated, he does are most often essays about a particular facet of software design.
highlight key shortcomings of traditional computer science edu-Each of the chapters is followed by a ''profile'' that is essencation. For example, most texts and courses that teach structured tially a case study of a product, a method, or a firm. Winograd wrote most of the profiles, and was a co-author on the others. and object-oriented design methods mention the importance of The function of the profiles is to link the content of the preceding doing research in the application domain as part of design work, chapter with the subject of the case study. The profiles provide but students are not trained in any of the qualitative research additional examples, in another person's voice, of how the contechniques (interviewing, observation, content analysis, activity cepts presented in the chapter have been applied in practice.
theory, for example) that would actually enable them to extract This structure encourages an interactive, non-linear engagement and organize knowledge about a complex application domain. with the book. Each chapter includes a brief biographical sketch Software design curricula which intend to address these shortof the author(s) or interview subjects, and each of the chapters comings are only now emerging in colleges and universities and profiles ends with a few suggested readings that identify and are small in number compared to mainstream computer works closely related to the content of that section of the book.
science and management information system programs. The The space available here does not allow discussion of each goal of such educational programs, Winograd says in his sumof the book's chapters, but some are of particular interest. ''The mation of the book, is to develop individuals who have the range Cultures of Prototyping'' by Michael Schrage discusses the of skills necessary to speak to people from many disciplines, including the users in an application domain, the coders, and the database specialists, as well as managers, marketers, and