Lately I’ve been getting a lot of enquiries as to why I named the the company Backspace Consulting. Well, some time in the recent past I read that clicking the backspace key on a keyboard made up for around 40% of online navigation.

"Aha!", I said, "this tells me something about the nature of people everywhere: we all like to know where we are in relation to where we’ve been and should we find ourselves in unknown territory, we want to know how to get back to a place we recognise."

People are facintated about their place in the world. This has come to the fore in recent years, what with people moving to live in different cities or countries from the place of their birth, moving away from the known into the unknown has never been so easy. Yet it remains a little unsettling. It is said that, in general, people who relocate to different countries either come back within 4 years, or stay for ever (or as long as for ever means anything these days). The pull to a place of comfort and the safety of the known is a driving force for much decision making. We might be forced to embrace change, to grab it thrillingly by the hand and wander with it into the great unknown, but there is part of us that likes to maintain a connection to the past, to our roots.

If we understand this about humanity, and it’s perfectly obvious when you look at the success of Facebook that it’s true, then we can apply this to designing all manner of online services.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I called the company Backspace Consulting: navigating the web is 60% going forward and 40% going backwards, in a manner of speaking.