The Atomic Chef is an altogether new collection of 20 true stories about technology and design-induced human
error by the author of the highly acclaimed original, Set Phasers on Stun. The 20 stand-alone chapters of this
new work describe how technological failures result from the incompatibilities between the way things are designed
and the way people actually perceive, think, and act. New technologies will succeed or fail based on our ability
to minimize these incompatibilities between the characteristics of people and the characteristics of the things
we create and use.
This book is the quintessential 'must read' for all those who deal with technology in any fashion. From the frustration
of an awkward ATM machine to the threat of accidental, nuclear Armageddon, Casey shows how the same crucial factors
come into play told through the very eyes of those people who saw and experienced these things. No student of design,
psychology, behavioral science, or technology should be without this book, and neither should any intelligent member
of society who wants to know what goes on with the successes and failures of modern technology.
Sit ringside to the action where compelling events unfold. The stories in this book will take you to airports and
airline cabins, an amusement park, a fertility clinic, a pharmaceutical plant, an emergency dispatch center, the
Olympic games, and a bank; to hospitals, spacecraft, ships, and cars. From the coasts of Peru and Monterey, in
orbit aboard the International Space Station, the freeways of Southern California and the back roads of France,
the battlefields of Afghanistan, and a nuclear fuel plant in Japan Ñ this is The Atomic Chef.