#progress indicators

How long will users really wait for loading before abandoning your product? And can loading indicators make that wait feel more tolerable?

A study by Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah explored these exact questions. Participants were split into two groups:

Group 1: Users who saw a progress bar while waiting.

Group 2: Users who had no visibility of progress at all.

The results were striking! Participants in Group 1 had a median waiting time of 22.6 seconds, more than twice the 9 seconds of Group 2. This clearly demonstrates that providing visual feedback during waiting can greatly improve user patience and keep them engaged.

In this article, we’ll explore progress indicators in depth—covering common types, variations, and best practices for applying them effectively. 

Abstract

A “percent-done progress indicator” is a graphical technique which allows the user to monitor the progress through the processing of a task. Progress indicators can be displayed on almost all types of output devices, and can be used with many different kinds of programs. Practical experience and formal experiments show that prograss indicators are an important and useful user-interface tool, and that they enhance the attractiveness and effectiveness of programs that incorporate them. This paper discusses why progress indicators are important. It includes the results of a formal experiment with progress indicators. One part of the experiment demonstrates that people prefer to have progress indicators. Another part attempted to replicate earlier findings to show that people prefer constant to variable response time in general, and then to show that this effect is reversed with progress indicators, but the results were not statistically significant. In fact, no significant preference for constant response time was shown, contrary to previously published results.

Meta

It should be clear to anyone by now that the US is on an ugly collision course with reality.  However, the American gospel states otherwise.  We're a white city on a hill, the apple in god's eye, the home where the brave plow their way to individualist prosperity, and the free bask in the glory of a Constitution and, well, everything, that's the bestest in teh world.

There's a cute little fly in the ointment of this national myth: just the opposite is true in an increasing number of ways.

Compared with our peer nations, the countries of the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development), the US is falling behind in a large number of the most important measures of social prosperity.  (And if there is a god, when the topic of America comes up she no doubt clears her throat and changes the subject.)

This must-read article presents a partial list of how far the land of McDonald's, SUVs, and Walmarts has sunk.

Are fundamental rethinkings needed everywhere?  Yes.  Does this country any longer have the ability to do so?  Who knows.

"America now has

    • the highest poverty rate, both generally and for children;

    • the greatest inequality of incomes;

    • the lowest social mobility;

    • the lowest score on the UN’s index of “material well-being of children”;

    • the worst score on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index;

    • the highest expenditure on health care as a percentage of GDP, yet all this money accompanied by the highest infant mortality rate, the highest prevalence of mental health problems, the highest obesity rate, the highest percentage of people going without health care due to cost, the highest consumption of antidepressants per capita, and the shortest life expectancy at birth;

    • the next-to-lowest score for student performance in math and middling performance in science and reading;

    • the highest homicide rate;

    • the largest prison population in absolute terms and per capita;

    • the highest carbon dioxide emissions and the highest water consumption per capita;

    • the lowest score on Yale’s Environmental Performance Index (except for Belgium) and the largest ecological footprint per capita (except for Denmark);

    • the lowest spending on international development and humanitarian assistance as a percentage of national income (except for Japan and Italy);

    • the highest military spending both in total and as a percentage of GDP; and