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Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reticulating splines actually comes from SimCity 2000 and they then used the idea in The Sims later http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Reticulating_splines

Oh, interesting. I thought it came from Don't Starve but they must have been adopting this from SimCity.

Yes, it’s a relatively common SimCity reference, though I could swear I saw “Don’t Starve” say “Reticulating Pines”.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen another game than simcity give it a voiceover...

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

#152
post #7

This 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…

> 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. It is deception. It's less obvious in case of a program, but imagine it when you're using some service in real life. You bring in a car for repairs, the mechanic says "right, I'm doing it now", goes to the other room and starts reading a newspaper. After some deliberate delay, fixes an obvious…

Only if he's billing me for more hours worked. He can both say that he's working on it right now and go to the break room to read a newspaper and be truthful. Lunch breaks and small breaks before/after lunch are a thing in some workplaces.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen an analog gauge move like this. The pressure gauge on our heating doesn't do that, the speedometer on my car doesn't tremble, and neither do analog Volt meters as far as I recall.

The speedometer on your car is almost certainly a digital system driving a needle. Unless you have a 40 year old car or something. So you shouldn't expect that to indicate how analog meters work.

Interesting, I didn’t know that.

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

#154
post #10
post #2

Deception is NEVER benevolent. Don't lie to your users, people.

So I should never pretend that an operation that took 10 ms took 200ms so the users stop hammering the Save button over and over again because there's 'no way' it could have saved that quickly?

Typically, applications disable the save button when there are no changes that could be saved.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

First someone states that the way web sites work now sucks. Then the next person states, ‘Well we used to build sites this way and then it doesn’t suck’. And then the next person comes in saying ‘well that just isn’t the way we build sites now’. If that isn’t the way we build sites now, either change the way we build sites or accept that it sucks. But this is Hacker News so we’re supposed to think about different way…

This a (mostly) solved problem. With Server Side Rendering the html payload delivers what the client side is would have rendered. The client side js takes over rendering after it loads.

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

#156

I do this all the time with loading spinners...if it's "too fast" then psychologically it just feels like nothing happened...so instead I just setTimeout() for 3 seconds.

Have you considered how much accumulated lifetime is wasted by all those 3 seconds again and again?

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

#157
post #34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember reading long ago about how they did something similar at an airport(Dallas IIRC). Basically, people complained about baggage claim taking too long, so they just moved the baggage claim area to the other side of the airport, so it took longer for passengers to reach it, by the time they did, their bags would already be there, so the complaints stopped.

I feel like this really isn't deception but actually solving the problem which is that passengers didn't want to stand around.

Seems like the passengers could have solved this themselves, by just walking in circles.

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

#158
More than a few times, I've had an app where an "in progress" dialog would pop-up and disappear for an operation that could take anywhere from 0.1 seconds to a few seconds to complete. If it happens to complete quickly, you don't get to see the dialog text and it can be confusing if the operation succeeded or not. A solution is to force the dialog to be shown for a minimum of a couple of seconds. It's a weird trade-off between wasting the time of a user who understands what's going on and avoiding confusion for a user who doesn't understand the app so well.

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

#159

More than a few times, I've had an app where an "in progress" dialog would pop-up and disappear for an operation that could take anywhere from 0.1 seconds to a few seconds to complete. If it happens to complete quickly, you don't get to see the dialog text and it can be confusing if the operation succeeded or not. A solution is to force the dialog to be shown for a minimum of a couple of seconds. It's a weird trade-o…

Or you can delay showing the dialog for half a second, during which you gather progress data and estimate for how long the dialog would be shown. If it's less than a couple of seconds, don't show it at all.

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

#160
post #65

This is a horribly researched article. Progress bars are not benevolent deception, they are deception by incorrect choice of UI elements. >Mask system hiccups to smooth out a user’s experience (like when a progress bar grows at a consistent rate, even if the process it’s visualizing is stuttering This is malicious deception. The only one being benefited is the developer when the users incorrectly think your software…

> This one is fine and can be grouped in the "skeuomorphism enhancements" category.

Actually, it's called comfort noise, and it's not just for skeumorphism's sake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_noise

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