Let’s say that I’m recording something on my Tivo. I check out the program and decide I don’t want it. So, I stop watching that program before it’s over, and I tell the Tivo to stop recording the program. Will I be keeping that recording for later? Doubtful, since I manually cancelled the process. So why doesn’t the Tivo automatically ask if I’d like to delete the partial recording? This little bit of extra logic would eliminate the need to return to the Now Playing list to find and delete the unwanted show.

The issue with user-created leftovers isn’t limited to Tivo. For instance, you get the same situation if you’re downloading a big file in your web browser, and decide to cancel it before it’s done. The partial download probably isn’t very useful, so the chances are quite good that the user will end up deleting it after they press cancel. What’s the takeaway here? In short, if a customer’s behavior indicates they want to cancel or abandon a process that hasn’t been completed yet, you can save them time and effort by offering to automatically remove the leftover files.