The real workplace situation is often (as in my case) that the team just doesn't have a design expert at their disposal for any projects whatsoever. In this situation programmers are often the de-facto "designers". Typically they stink at it at first. The best approach in that context is to do what you can so they will make the better choices, and recognize problems and opportunities to fix them.
You cannot ignore the fact that your developers don't know design, but you can get them informed about what to try to attain, and to think in terms of the user.
This is a pleasure to read, and gives succinct and memorable examples of real products with UI's that had obvious mistakes (or rather they should have been obvious). And yet these items, and ones like them get released in products every day. It also explains how the same devices and UI's should have been redesigned. One of his points is that programmers are not typically trained to be experts at user interfaces. As a programmer I can't take offense at that because it's true - I see examples of UI design errors in lot's of software ("Are You Sure "). Really, in school - the treatment of the design of UI was never done in enough depth.
The most important point is that it's full of good to-the-point examples that are memorable. With them, a team can share their views with some common context.. They make some of the design discussions and choices much clearer.
So I wouldn't say it should be your only choice, but it should be one of the first ones to be sure to read.
"terribly easy"? You lost me as soon as you said "...set up a system with these features:".
Exactly when/where/who has any government organization (fed/state/other/student council) been able to implement (or even plan!) as system
Consider this - New Hampshire has no sales tax and Massachusetts has a 5% sales tax. Is it any wonder that residents of Mass living close to the border will happily travel a few minutes north to save some cash - especially on pricier appliances. But I never heard of Mass trying to go after the (lost) revenue from those consumer purchases (oh except for the auto purchases where the DMV will nail you for the $$).
Now is this really different just because a consumer makes the out-of-state purchase electronically? I don't think so - I think it differs only in that it can be tracked and managed. I certainly don't believe that the effort,costs and damage of trying to collect this money is worth the revenue. And finally, the important points are
The moon is made of green cheese. -- John Heywood