Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
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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)
#2Deception is NEVER benevolent.
Don't lie to your users, people.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#3Deception is NEVER benevolent. Don't lie to your users, people.
Our brains are funny things and there are lots of ways to hack them to make the world a more enjoyable place.
A related idea: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1244-defining-the-problem-of-...
I would put these solutions into the same category: accommodating the way the brain works to create an overall more pleasant experience.
You may choose to call it deception, but you probably don't want to live in the world where no one does anything along these lines.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#4Deception is NEVER benevolent. Don't lie to your users, people.
Our brains are funny things and there are lots of ways to hack them to make the world a more enjoyable place. A related idea: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1244-defining-the-problem-of-... I would put these solutions into the same category: accommodating the way the brain works to create an overall more pleasant experience. You may choose to call it deception, but you probably don't want to live in the world where n…
> overall more pleasant experience
It is far more pleasing to understand what is going on and be able to measure its progress then to be shown a series of arbitrary shapes and symbols that happen to push one's happy buttons.
Stop pandering to your users' mercurial, unpredictable, and manipulable feelings, and start using your software to teach their brains how it all works.
Plus, then I don't finish the interaction with, "well, what else have they deceived me on?"
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our brains are funny things and there are lots of ways to hack them to make the world a more enjoyable place. A related idea: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/1244-defining-the-problem-of-... I would put these solutions into the same category: accommodating the way the brain works to create an overall more pleasant experience. You may choose to call it deception, but you probably don't want to live in the world where n…
> overall more pleasant experience It is far more pleasing to understand what is going on and be able to measure its progress then to be shown a series of arbitrary shapes and symbols that happen to push one's happy buttons. Stop pandering to your users' mercurial, unpredictable, and manipulable feelings, and start using your software to teach their brains how it all works. Plus, then I don't finish the interaction w…
Maybe for you but i dont think that is true for a majority of the population.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#6A 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 in a delay. Again, I wouldn't call the delay a deception; but rather an accommodation of human perception where longer = harder, and thus more valuable.
In the same way most people can't reason about probability, most people also can't fathom how fast computers really are.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#7This 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 believe something that actually is true. The natural instantaneous UI is the deceptive one for a user who is led to believe that no actual work happened.
A fake progress bar that shows steady progress when the actual work is stuttering is not benevolent, unless you can be sure the operation will finish in a fixed amount of time approximately at the end of the progress bar. This kind of deception is irritating and not benevolent.
A fake progress bar like the way change.org petitions make it look like people are voting up the petition right now? That is deception, and regardless of the merits of the particular petition I don't think it's benevolent.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#8This 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 would think that fake progress bars about "triple checking" your taxes would fall into that latter categorization.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#9"The security theater appeared to work." (referring to a fake progress bar in a game)
That's not what security theater means.
Re: Why some apps use fake progress bars (2017)
#10Deception 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?