Do customers ask silly questions? Once worked on a service desk, or have read one of the many famous help desk stories, one must admit that this is true! But how is it possible that otherwise bright, thoughtful and intelligent people ask "silly" questions? Peter van Eijk wrote a very interesting article about Computer Human Interaction (Dutch / English (Translated by Google). Investigations to user interfaces are normally focused on visually impaired people, but professor Alan Newell, stated that the same applies for people with limited attention, like in emergency situations. A good interface can then literally mean the difference between life and death. What happens if someone with an IQ of 140 has to perform 10 different tasks? Add (stressed) emotion to the mix and how much cleverness can you expect per task?

One can imagine that the engineer, that is picking up all the pieces after a disaster has a lot on his mind (All data: gone! Database: gone!) and therefore is unable to calmly think through all the required steps to perform. This is not the time of complex dialog screens full of needless fiddling options! The man needs his data back, now!

Keeping this thought in mind enables BackupAgent employees, whether being designers, developers or support engineers, to make on-the-spot decisions: An extra feature is requested: will this make the restore process more complex? New technology is available, will it make the restore process faster and/or more reliable? An error occurs: does it happen during backup, when we have time to figure out why it happens, or during restore, thereby making it very critical? Following these guidelines has made our software naturally and intuitive to use: packed with advanced features, but easy and straightforward in times of distress.