Widely recognized as the "Father of Visual Basic",[1] Cooper is also known for his books About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity.

[6] SSG's software accounting product, General Ledger, was sold through ads in popular magazines such as Byte and Interface Age.

Ultimately, Cooper developed a dozen original products at Structured Systems Group[8] before he sold his interest in the company in 1980.

[9] Eubanks wrote CBASIC’s precursor, BASIC-E as a student project while at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California with professor Gary Kildall.

[10] When Eubanks left the Navy, he joined Kildall’s successful operating system company, Digital Research, Inc., in Monterey.

During the 1980s, Alan Cooper authored several business applications including Microphone II for Windows and an early, critical-path project management program called SuperProject.

[12] In 1988, Alan Cooper created a visual programming language (code-named “Ruby”) that allowed Windows users to build “Finder”-like shells.

[18] In 1992, in response to a rapidly consolidating software industry, Cooper began consulting with other companies, helping them design their applications to be more user friendly.

By the second edition, as the industry and profession evolved, “interface design” had become the more precise “interaction design.” The basic message of this book was directed at programmers: Do the right thing.

In his 1998 book, The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity, Alan Cooper outlined his methodology, called Goal-Directed design, based on the concept that software should speed the user towards his or her ultimate goal rather than ensnare him or her in computer minutiae.

Based on a brief discussion in the book, personas rapidly gained popularity in the software industry[22] due to their unusual power and effectiveness.

Cooper advocates for integrating design into business practice in order to meet customer needs and to build better products faster by doing it right the first time.

[23][24] The company uses a human-centered methodology called “goal-directed design” that emphasizes the importance of understanding the user's desired end-state and their motivations for getting there.