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I am trying to load a third-party script in my program. If the script fails to load properly then I will attempt to load again a set number of times. I need to inform the user that this reload attempt is happening.
Is there a UX difference between these two messages?
Reloading. Attempt 1 of 10.
Reloading. 10 attempts remaining.
I'm partial to the former and I think it is more common, but I've seen the latter when failing login attempts.
I think the difference has to do with the user side, when logging in you are the one making the attempts, thus you are likely to know what happened and what is happening (i.e. Failed attempt and x attempts left). If a system loads a script, however, the user most likely doesn't know how many attempts were made already. Thus, x out of N is then more informative to the user. Also because it is out of the user's control.
So what you actually potentially is not one but two sets of messages. The first one is telling the user that you are loading a script (Attempt 1 of 10), then there is a second message telling the user whether the script has loaded successfully (or you may not want to show anything after), and if it fails then perhaps giving them a choice of whether to continue or not giving them a choice and just reattempting to load it again (Script loading failed, attempt 2 of 10).
To me the messages are the same because all you are trying to show is where the end point for the cycle is, and not really telling the user anything that they can really action (unless you want to give them a choice about whether or not to continue trying).
