I can see a case for artificial delays in some cases, so the user can comprehend everything relevant that is happening. But... trying to also use this time to employ tricks to give users "false confidence" in your software is taking a questionable turn.
Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
101–110 of 200 posts
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#102This article lumps a lot of techniques together that are fundamentally different. The ones that are actual deception are not benevolent, and the ones that are benevolent are not actually deception. Deception is leading someone to believe something that isn't true. If a deliberate delay is added to a UI to make it clear to the user that actual work is being done, this is not deception. You are leading the user to beli…
I think you've just redefined 'deception' as things you don't like. How is it not deceptive to make a user wait longer than the task takes? (Perceived benefit aside) How is it not benevolent to make the progress bar smooth even if the underlying process is not? Most users don't and shouldn't need to understand a process that may not progress linearly. The article is pretty clearly operating on a definition of 'decept…
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Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Visual confirmation that it isn't hung, I'd be happy too.
I am reminded of a webcomic, that i fail to locate at this moment, that reminded me of the practice of placing something next to a progress bar, like say during a Windows 95 install, to check if anything is actually happening.
Classic!
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#104Two mobile devices I worked on, at different companies, ended up with fake progress bars for boot-up. We engineers wanted individual bar segments for kernel load, filesystem mount, daemon startup and so on -- but wiring up the necessary instrumentation to the GUI would have been significant work, and management wasn't going to allow anything less than a show-stopper bug to delay code freeze.
So in the real world, time-to-market beats UI truthfulness.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#105I had a report in Microsoft Access that took about five minutes to run - and the users hated it. I had the application throw up a fake dialog with fake messages about "Collating data, Cross checking, Sorting" and other such nonsense. The report now took eight minutes to run because I had to abuse the "On Timer" event for it to work. The users were delighted with the improvement.
This sounds like a Coding Horror story that is entirely made up. Using a timer made your code go from 5 to 8 minutes?
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#106So not only are they wasting everybody's time via the useless animations in the software that people pay good money for, but they're also wasting people's time by not being honest about it - forcing users to do their own research and learn about it on their own or from outside sources. Interesting.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am reminded of a webcomic, that i fail to locate at this moment, that reminded me of the practice of placing something next to a progress bar, like say during a Windows 95 install, to check if anything is actually happening.
I do that whenever I have to wait on a progress bar. I zoom in with whatever accessibility options there are, then when a pixel is 3-5mm I put my mouse cursor at the end of the bar and wait.
Wow, I thought I was the only one.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#108Reminds me of the old IE bar (not sure if it still does this), but it would crawl towards 100%, getting slower and slower as it approached the end, when waiting for a page to respond. In reality IE had no idea how much "progress" had been made by the server, if any.
The SMS sending bar on old phones used to just take four seconds to go across, then stop at 95% if it wasn't done yet.
The iPhone did this, and then when they added iMessage originally it would still use the same tactic even if you were sending say, a large video (in which case the software obviously should know how much has been uploaded so far). I guess their internal API for "send a message" was not properly updated to take into account multimedia.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#109I had a report in Microsoft Access that took about five minutes to run - and the users hated it. I had the application throw up a fake dialog with fake messages about "Collating data, Cross checking, Sorting" and other such nonsense. The report now took eight minutes to run because I had to abuse the "On Timer" event for it to work. The users were delighted with the improvement.
Visual confirmation that it isn't hung, I'd be happy too.
You're happy until 30 minutes later when the progress bar is still getting asymptotically closer to the end, and you come to suspect that the only thing that didn't crash was the progress bar.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like this really isn't deception but actually solving the problem which is that passengers didn't want to stand around.
Except they had to spend the same amount of time walking. If presented as a choice I'd usually choose standing.
Even right after getting off an airplane, where you had to sit in a cramped seat for hours on end? I’d much rather take the opportunity to stretch my legs.