Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#121

Post by charleslmunger » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:18 AM UTC

underwater wrote: post #90

A example of this approach failing can be seen in Pokémon Go, where a Pokeball will shake to show a captured Pokémon trying to escape. The user is forced to sit through an obviously fake delay before they are rewarded for their efforts. It seems to be an attempt to increase the tension but the execution is incredibly bad.

This is a mainstay from the original games, but it also serves a useful purpose - there's an RPC that's asking the server if the catch was successful. It does a pretty good job of hiding that latency.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#122

Post by slavik81 » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:20 AM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #118

digi_owl wrote: post #93

Earlier 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.

This is the comic you're thinking of. http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2015/02/19/when-i-install-a-so... This was one of the comics that convinced me to add them to my RSS feed. I have not been disappointed since.

It's a blank page that says "Loading..." Is that the joke...?

edit: I started browsing around their site, and when I returned to that page via the back button, the actual comic was there.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#123

Post by floatrock » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:20 AM UTC

markcerqueira wrote: post #29

hutzlibu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you have give also vague, but accurate information as well? User's like to know what's going on, even if they maybe don't understand all the details, but at least they see things are happening and not just a (fake) progress bar. So they can connect more to what is happening and therefore be more understanding and patient instead of just being told to wait, with no further information, which nobody likes.

> Couldn't you have give also vague, but accurate information as well? Could you give me an example of what you consider "vague, but accurate information?"

The article's discussion about the NYT election accuracy meter wiggling randomly (but within the error bars) is a textbook example of "vague but accurate" information, perhaps to a fault.

How do you visually represent "error bars" to someone who's not technical enough to have ever seen them? Not everyone takes college stats, math, and engineering.

Technically, wiggling within the error bars is a precise way of saying "the precise location is vague -- it's somewhere within this range", in that at any moment it is showing one precise, acceptable guess.

The most fascinating piece there was that as the error bars decreased, the range of the wiggling decreased as well.

Yeah, it doesn't convey the extend of the error bars instantaneously -- you need to stare at it over time -- but it does convey the idea of error bars.

I think the people upset about the error wiggle are either a) being pedantic that it's not visualized in the way they learned it should be visualized back in college; or b) they haven't accepted the idea that sometimes we don't have an exact precise black-and-white answer (we DO have ways to precisely quantify the degree of our uncertainty though).

All of this not to say it was the best execution... perhaps if they 'ghosted' previous needle positions like how old movie radars ghost a green blip as the thingie spins around, maybe it would have been a kind of hybrid approach where the error bars do kinda appear in the overlapping ghosting shadows but still change over time...

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#124

Post by floatrock » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:28 AM UTC

wanderingstan wrote: post #6

A physical analog of this would be when an Houston airport reduced complaints by moving it's baggage claim to be farther away from gates. Would you call this deception? Also: A friend runs a service that analyzes web page design based on tens of thousands of hours of human eye tracking studies. An analysis only takes a matter of milliseconds, but they found that their conversion rate went up if they artificially put…

> ... Houston airport reduced complaints by moving it's baggage claim to be farther away from gates. Would you call this deception?

nah man, that's just straight up Dark Patterns -- https://darkpatterns.org

Like when your 2nd-touch emails technically and legally have an Unsubscribe link, but it's the same color as the background. Or how installing the Yahoo search toolbar was an opt-out with each java update.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#125

Post by floatrock » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:32 AM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #112

If you’ve ever made a chatbot you have to do this. Add in a fake few seconds delay so it seems like it’s considering what you said in its reply. Replying instantly makes you feel like you’re being railroaded and ignored.

Bonus points if you trigger the "Human VonNotachatbot is currently typing..." indicator during the artificial delay period.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#126

Post by floatrock » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:40 AM UTC

so33 wrote: post #13

The NYT example is interesting. During the US presidential election I interpreted the needle’s fluctuations (on what was a simulation of an analog gauge–a skeuomorphism) to indicate some form of uncertainty in the data. This would not be deceptive (at least according to my own mental model of how such a gauge would operate in real life). However, according to this article many interpreted the movement as the needle r…

> according to this article many interpreted the movement as the needle reflecting actual changes in data.

I said more in another comment elsewhere in the thread, but I think outside of stem fields, things often need to be precise and black-or-white... the idea of quantifying the degree of uncertainty ("error bars") is foreign. That's one of the ideas I would try to give the rest of the world.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#127

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

JoshMnem wrote: post #97

diplomatpuppy wrote: post #11

I 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.

That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed. It's also one of the irritating things about "Material Design" websites, where responses to clicks are artificially delayed before speeding out with unnatural acceleration. "Nothing is happening. JUST KIDDING!" I'm not sure if that is to mask the slowness of mo…

> That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed.

To be fair, depending on how the progress bar is implemented, it might not be a guarantee.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#128

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:46 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #111

JoshMnem wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed. It's also one of the irritating things about "Material Design" websites, where responses to clicks are artificially delayed before speeding out with unnatural acceleration. "Nothing is happening. JUST KIDDING!" I'm not sure if that is to mask the slowness of mo…

That is one thing I dislike about sites that show no loading bar. On a slow connection it's impossible to tell if the page is still loading or already failed. Web browsers have progress bars. I think your complaint is with "sites" that just serve a JS payload and then load "the real site" entirely from requests made by JS. Turns out if you generate and serve actual HTML, you get a progress bar for free!

I don't know why every thread about Web applications needs someone to tell me that technically HTML was just designed to be a document format. OK, great, now it isn't just that.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#129

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:48 AM UTC

charleslmunger wrote: post #121

underwater wrote: post #90

A example of this approach failing can be seen in Pokémon Go, where a Pokeball will shake to show a captured Pokémon trying to escape. The user is forced to sit through an obviously fake delay before they are rewarded for their efforts. It seems to be an attempt to increase the tension but the execution is incredibly bad.

This is a mainstay from the original games, but it also serves a useful purpose - there's an RPC that's asking the server if the catch was successful. It does a pretty good job of hiding that latency.

I never got into Pokemon Go, but it was pretty effective in the original game in that all kinds of superstitions developed about what buttons to press at what times during the animation to increase the likelihood that a Pokemon would be caught.

Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

#130

Post by emodendroket » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 6:52 AM UTC

So, for the example of Turbotax, specifically, a few years ago I owed a few thousand dollars in taxes (basically my withholdings were off). Seeing the calculator do its little "calculating your biggest refund..." song and dance and then announce I owned several grand was just kind of like a slap in the face. Guess they didn't consider that particular case too carefully. :)