Show progress as percentage or as absolute numbers?

Question

I'm making a simple progress bar based on the amount of minutes a user has spent, and the amount of minutes she's required to spend on a certain task. See below for an example.

I'm considering 3 options for the label:

1. Percentage (75%).
2. Number of minutes completed versus required (45/60min).
3. Both of the above.

Providing the minutes gives a better feeling of how much actual time still needs to be spent, whereas the percentage give a clearer feeling of the relative progress. Note that the required amount of minutes (60 min) is also communicated on other places, not just in this label.

Which of the above options will be most informative for my users, without showing unnecessary information?

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In addition, I noticed that Khan Academy is using both % finished and x/xx skills completed, with emphasis on %. (See below)

Answer 1

My honest opinion is that the time spent / total time label is enough, and that also adding the percentage is redundant information.

So why do I think that, especially considering Khan Academy has both a Done / Total label + a percentage label? The answer is in what differentiates your two scenarios. In your design you have a progress bar which doesn't exist in the benchmark (Khan), the progress bar will give instant visual feedback regarding how much is done and how much remains.

The user will be interested to know whether she's done less than half the time, half the time or more than half the time, a quick glance will tell her that instantly. For more high resolution feedback the user can see the time label, to get actual feedback of how much time remains. Adding a percentage label on top of this won't give any additional value, instead it will add to the visual bulk and cognitive load.

So in summary, you already provide enough feedback to only display the time label.

Answer 2

If I'm in class and staring down the clock until I can leave then I have zero desire to know how much time I've spent in there. All I care about is how many minutes till X o'clock.

With the psychology stated above I think the most beneficial piece of information you can give is Time remaining: 17 minutes and update this as time passes.

I think that if you are dead-set on creating some sort of bar then make then fill the bar (full orange) upon page load and as Time Remaining decreases then you should decrease (more white) the bar accordingly.

Answer 3

Both indicators have pros and cons, but probably using only the ratio puts the highest cognitive burden on the user as math processing might be involved. So why not play safe and use both? Specially when you can get away with it without penalising your design.

Answer 4

It depends on your intent.

In the Khan Academy's example you provided, I believe emphasis is on the percentage specifically cause it is more abstract. For someone trying to complete something, being 50% of the way looks more positive than being 100/200, it may feel like less work to be done.

Now if you think about a download progress UI, I as a user would rarely ever look at percentages, cause all I care for is how long will it take for me to be able to use whatever I'm downloading.

Answer 5

It depends of how slow is your system.

Have a look about this good article of Norman Group.

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/progress-indicators/

Progress bar has 3 goals : - 1- helps user to say him the system is alive. As heart rythme - 2- helps user to know "around how many time" he has to wait - 3- and finally make a distraction to help the system to seem less slow it is. Important for user satisfaction.

Sometime you give just information "step x of y" sometimes you give percentage information. Rarely real time because the user knows perfectly what is 15 min or 40min or 1 hour and it can be really bad for the feeling of the user about the app. The risk is you underline the slowness of the system.

And if for any reason, it will be slower than ypu indicatot the user will not trust your app anymore.

Do you remember time information with massive copy files in Windows XP ....sometimes you see 5 minutes and a secondlater you see 190min....do you trust this informatio ?

So inform to help user but be carful not to lie him too much precise information which can be wrong.

And not to forget some design pattern prefer to show positive message by displaying how many step the usr r has to wait and not how many the system has already done. Example : Rather "Just 3 last steps and it is OK" than "system has done 120/123 step"

Answer 6

OK sorry for the mistake. To answer your real issue some elements. If you display time be sure it is a real average time make test with several users or better if possible calculate dynamically average time by record each user stage. You can even take in account the percent he is speeder or slower to calculate a real personal average time. and mandatory precise your users it is average time. In other words don't afraid them or stress them with time they can't reach because there are experts who go very fast. The same constraints than my first reply : it depends of the context. If there are only 15 questions (this cursor is an example) or steps the user is OK and ready to go forward. If there are 100 questions displaying him 2/100 can afraid him and 2℅ can also afraid him and with 5 minutes by step 500 minutes will sure afraid him. One of the solution is also in "natural langage" like "Whaou you have reach the tenth question in 12 min. Again approximatively 45 min and it is finish !" or imagine virtual prices the user can win with group of steps like a stage in game of car races. So when there is not a lot of steps number/total is easier to understand plus around workload time to finish. when there is more steps percent is easier to understand and will less afraid plus workload time...and finally if there are too much questions split them in groups and use number or percent plus workload time and prices.