Progress bars still lie
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Progress bars still lie
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Re: Progress bars still lie
#2Progress bars are great when they convey meaningful information... sometimes it's nice to know if you have time to grab a coffee, or actually eat lunch. In my experience (when having to supply said bars) is that they serve primarily to tell the hapless user that things are still happening. In other words, the actual number is not important...what is important is real feedback that things are still happening and it's worth waiting. Or things are b0rked and you should start over. I don't care about a real time or % progress bar...just something that honestly (to OP's point) lets me know that things aren't screwed.
Edit: typos
Re: Progress bars still lie
#3Progress bars are way better then spinners: They communicate an time/duration estimate, at least. Even in the case it is bad, this is always better then just showing a spinner, indicating that some system is doing something. Spinners got omnipresent since the Web 2.0. Nowadays for me they are almost always a sign of lazy programmers with an "that's good enough" paradigm.
Re: Progress bars still lie
#4Progress bars are great when they convey meaningful information... sometimes it's nice to know if you have time to grab a coffee, or actually eat lunch. In my experience (when having to supply said bars) is that they serve primarily to tell the hapless user that things are still happening. In other words, the actual number is not important...what is important is real feedback that things are still happening and it's…
> I don't care about a real time or % progress bar...just something that honestly (to OP's point) let's me know that things aren't screwed.
That's where "marquee" progress bars fit in. Those poor abominations that, like Sisyphus, progress without advancing, because a simple activity indicator wasn't user-friendly enough.
Re: Progress bars still lie
#5Progress bars are way better then spinners: They communicate an time/duration estimate, at least. Even in the case it is bad, this is always better then just showing a spinner, indicating that some system is doing something. Spinners got omnipresent since the Web 2.0. Nowadays for me they are almost always a sign of lazy programmers with an "that's good enough" paradigm.
I agree that spinners really aren't useful (for anything that takes more than 5-10 seconds). Solution #2 from the post is what I want!
Re: Progress bars still lie
#6Lying progress bars are one of those ubiquitous anti-features which make me suspect the people who write the apps that have it or who decide what features they are to have never actually use their own software, or they'd realize in a heartbeat how incredibly annoying and frustrating lying progress bars are.
I'd love to hear an HN reader who is brave enough to own up to implementing one of these explain the rationale behind them.
Re: Progress bars still lie
#7Progress bars are way better then spinners: They communicate an time/duration estimate, at least. Even in the case it is bad, this is always better then just showing a spinner, indicating that some system is doing something. Spinners got omnipresent since the Web 2.0. Nowadays for me they are almost always a sign of lazy programmers with an "that's good enough" paradigm.
Progress bars that lie are seldom better than spinners. I suppose what is needed is an informed spinner. It would have to be visually different than a bog-standard spinner. I have seen many cases where the numbers on the bar were entirely made up...but they seem to keep people happy. The illusion of progress maybe?
Re: Progress bars still lie
#8Progress bars are great when they convey meaningful information... sometimes it's nice to know if you have time to grab a coffee, or actually eat lunch. In my experience (when having to supply said bars) is that they serve primarily to tell the hapless user that things are still happening. In other words, the actual number is not important...what is important is real feedback that things are still happening and it's…
> I don't care about a real time or % progress bar...just something that honestly (to OP's point) let's me know that things aren't screwed. That's where "marquee" progress bars fit in. Those poor abominations that, like Sisyphus, progress without advancing, because a simple activity indicator wasn't user-friendly enough.
Especially fun in Web UIs where the callback that would remove the spinner will never be called because some error occurred somewhere in between and is only logged in the console where no normal user will ever see it ...
Personally I feel that to be very much a subversion of the »things are still moving, so stuff is still happening« assumption that has been common in normal desktop applications.
Re: Progress bars still lie
#9Lying progress bars are one of those ubiquitous anti-features which make me suspect the people who write the apps that have it or who decide what features they are to have never actually use their own software, or they'd realize in a heartbeat how incredibly annoying and frustrating lying progress bars are. I'd love to hear an HN reader who is brave enough to own up to implementing one of these explain the rationale…
1.) User submits ticket stating "action X is slow"
2.) Project Manager creates dev task "make action X fast"
3.) Too much work to actually make action X fast. Decides to make the user feel like it's going faster.
4.) Deploys fake progress bar to prod. No new tickets.
Re: Progress bars still lie
#10Lying progress bars are one of those ubiquitous anti-features which make me suspect the people who write the apps that have it or who decide what features they are to have never actually use their own software, or they'd realize in a heartbeat how incredibly annoying and frustrating lying progress bars are. I'd love to hear an HN reader who is brave enough to own up to implementing one of these explain the rationale…
Made one for an internal feature using an overly simple algorithm (% of tasks completed). I was the only one using the tool so I understood the tradeoffs of the progress bar. After a while this tool made it into wider use, but the progress bar remained.