Tag Archives: product design

Motif #4.1

Published February 25, 2011 | by Chandar | in data deduplication, Druva inSync, News & Events, Productization, Products, Technology & Innovation
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Every well-planned release has a motif, a term often used to describe a dominant theme in a literary, artistic, or musical work.

In all the early releases, the motif for Druva has been Simplicity: simplicity for both end-users and for IT administrators. For end users, Druva inSync is now so simple to use that it just works without their knowing. It’s completely non-intrusive and works on all kinds of networks such as WAN and VPN. It’s so simple to use that end users can access their data from any Web browser without having to contact IT. Likewise, for IT administrators, it’s so simple to download (~40MB), install (under 20 minutes), and manage (almost zero maintenance) that the total cost of ownership is almost negligible. The simplicity motif has been a strong differentiator for Druva’s offerings.

For inSync 4.0, we made Storage and Bandwidth Optimization the motif. To optimize storage, we introduced App-aware Dedupe, an industry-first dedupe technology that offers a 90% storage savings across all user data and a 100% dedupe accuracy at the source (laptops) for supported applications such as Outlook and Office. To optimize bandwidth, we introduced the Octopus WAN optimization engine, a multi-threaded client architecture that does smart bandwidth throttling to offer a 5x performance gain for every client backing up on WAN.

The eye-catching red shack on the wharf (Rockport, Massachusetts) is often called Motif #1, a reference to its popularity among artists.

The theme for inSync 4.1 emerged naturally to “Scale” as customers were increasingly deploying Druva to more users in each of their environments. With release 4.1, we wanted to make inSync scale efficiently along several dimensions as outlined below –

Scale -

  • 2000 users per server
  • 16TB of data per server
  • 200 parallel connections per server

Performance -

  • We’re excited to introduce an innovative HyperCache technology, which can improve backup performance by 6x compared to inSync 4.0. HyperCache is an in-memory cache that can be configured to access the most optimal subset of your dedupe index in memory resulting in a high hit rate. The usual 80-20 rule applies here: with just a 30% subset of the dedupe index, Hypercache can deliver upwards of 75% hit rate. We recommend a 4GB of HyperCache size for every 1TB of data to maximize performance. The admin console offers a simple way for you to configure HyperCache for optimal performance.
  • You can now configure an SSD storage for your dedupe index to further enhance your server performance. Lab results show a whopping 12x performance improvement with HyperCache and SSD configurations.
  • You can now install Druva on a 64-bit system for enhanced performance.

Administration –

  • 4.1 now supports a new administrative role in addition to a Server Administrator. A Profile Administrator role grants permissions to manage one or more user profiles in order to edit profile settings, add users, and manage data restore for those profiles. This is a great way to scale the administration tasks across your organization between server and profile administration.
  • In light of the above role, we’ve enhanced our dashboard and reporting, so an administrator can get a customized view of their reports depending on their role.
  • You can now automate the import of users to inSync from your Active Directory. A periodic import from your AD can be set up to dynamically add users to inSync.

Access -

We’re excited about the upcoming deployments of inSync 4.1 and the performance benefits to all of you. In my next blog, I’ll talk about the 2 editions of inSync 4.1 (Enterprise and Professional), how they compare, and which one is right for you. Stay tuned….

 

Six Common Usability Mistakes in Software Product Design

Published February 22, 2009 | by Jaspreet | in Productization, Technology & Innovation
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By now, all good designers and developers realize the importance of usability for their work. Usable products offer great user experiences, and great user experiences lead to happy customers.

Six common mistakes and recommendations for product design and usability -

1. Usability Vs Utility
Utility refers to the ability of the product to perform tasks. The more tasks the product is designed to perform, the more utility it has. Usability refers to the ease of learning and performing these tasks.

utility vs usability

Most software give higher priority to features than usability. As a result it becomes more and more confusing for the end user to get work done.

2. Liking it Vs Using It
Likeability is always a desirable trait in a product. If people like the product, they are more likely to use it and to recommend it to others. But as with utility, likeability is often confused with usability.

Liking It - Skype

People often like a product for reasons unrelated to utility and usability. They may be attracted to its styling and flash, or to the status they believe the product confers upon them. People tend to like highly usable products, but you should not assume that means a well-liked product is usable.

3. Discovery Vs Flow
Some of the most widely used products do not have an instructions manual e.g. toothbrush or Skype.

Products with “Installation Manuals” turn me off. IMO, there is place on earth for installation manuals. And admin guides should be only when you want to learn a little extra or troubleshoot. Instead the product should try and use inline or in-GUI help as much as possible.

Discovery involves looking for, and finding, a product’s feature in response to a particular need. And it gets worse when a complex feature needs multiple inputs or choices to be made.

I am a big fan of wizards. I think the task becomes much simpler when broken down into series of actions.

4. Tiny Meaningless buttons
The buttons should signify action. The most common mistake with buttons is when they are labeled “OK” which in my opinion makes very little sense.

button with action

Buttons should have lables which signify clear actions like – “Modify Report Schedule”

5. Duplicate Actions
Quite often, products have more than one ways of performing the same task. This is confusing and often irritating. There should always be one clear way of performing an action.

6. Don’t Give Too Many Choices
Never confuse flexibility with giving too many choice. You would never buy car from a salesman who gives you 8-10 names for “the cars that might suit you”. Instead you are more likely to buy, when the salesman gives you 1 (or max 2) options and convinces you.

Too many choices

If you are sure that more than 80% of your audience is likely to vote “yes” for the option, please make it a default. Or if you really want it, add it to “advanced”.

Disclosure
If you think inSync is a very user friendly product, you would be pleasently surprised with the upcoming upgrade. Usability has been one of our core focus areas in inSync v3 release.