The book metaphor approach was created to simplify database access. The intent was to improve access speed and comfort. In 1990, we created an advanced book metaphor interface (BMI) to a set of about 300 design guidelines. The user interacts with the guidelines through a ‘book like’ screen and operations such as the table of contents, the index, or browsing. Experiments revealed, however, that the BMI did not offer a significant improvement over the equivalent printed version of the guidelines. The BMI was more comfortable but users did not perform the task, correcting an example of a bad data input screen, any more rapidly. The problem was that novice users did not understand the tools offered by the BMI and so failed to use them in the optimum manner. An agent was added to the BMI that monitors the user's commands and, when the user deviates from the optimum procedure, graphically suggests what the more correct procedure would be. The subjects of the usability analysis were software designers who did not have background in human factors. They were instructed to design screens through the use of the guidelines using the BMI. The agent was provided to only half of them. The usability analysis finds that the new BMI realizes higher productivity and increased user acceptance.