179
votes
Accepted
At what point does a user lose trust in a Busy Spinner?
Jakob Nielsen wrote an article called Response times - 3 important limits.
The basic advice regarding response times has been about the same for thirty years [Miller 1968; Card et al. 1991]. He wrote ...
- 8,949
108
votes
Accepted
How to let users know that updates are not real time
Add the time of the last update. That way users have a better understanding how old or new the information is. But it only works if you can use the users system clock to determine the shown time.
If ...
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103
votes
Accepted
What are the pros and cons of using a branded preloader?
Not directly answering your question, but the trend I'm seeing seems to suggest that people are doing away with preloaders in favour of skeleton UI and progressive loading because of perceived ...
- 1,692
98
votes
How to let users know that updates are not real time
There is no reason to calculate this for the user unless you truly believe they cannot tell time.
"Your order will be ready at 18:12" should suffice; it does not matter how many minutes away ...
- 5,658
88
votes
How to tell the users about a unpredictably long process?
There is a difference between a spinner and a progress indicator:
a spinner only communicates the wait,
a progress indicator (be it a progress bar or any other form going from 0 to 100%) ...
- 13.9k
77
votes
At what point does a user lose trust in a Busy Spinner?
Imagine you and I are talking to each other in the street. You've asked me if I have the time and with barely any hesitation I look at my watch and tell you. You don't give it a second thought. You ...
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49
votes
How to tell the users about a unpredictably long process?
For a wait as long as that, I would be reluctant to ask the user to wait at all.
Consider showing them a result such as "Thank you, your form submission has been accepted and is being processed, you ...
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38
votes
At what point does a user lose trust in a Busy Spinner?
Scott Klemmer's rule of thumb is:
Answer shorter than a second: No feedback
Answer between 1 and 5 seconds: BusySpinner
Answer longer than 5 seconds: Progress bar
10 seconds is a long time. You ...
- 589
24
votes
Accepted
How long should the delay be before a tooltip pops up?
If anyone is still looking for updated answers around this subject, Nielsen Norman has a great article on the subject: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/timing-exposing-content/
Mouse cursor ...
- 276
21
votes
Should a "loading" text or spinner stay a minimum time on screen?
In this situation, the solution Facebook uses is great if you can do it. A "skeleton" of the page is immediately shown and then the actual content fills in the skeleton when it's available. The ...
- 3,878
21
votes
Accepted
How to understand the technical issues while designing?
Avoid designing in isolation without PM and Engineering as partners. You'll never have the full perspective on your own.
Ask questions early
Self study to understand your tech stack (and web ...
- 25k
14
votes
Should a "loading" text or spinner stay a minimum time on screen?
Based on Jakob Nielson's research, I'd say 1 - 9 seconds is an acceptable time if you add a spinner and the minimum is 1 second.
See this article, Website Response Times:
The 3 response-time ...
- 4,521
14
votes
Accepted
Is it possible for a web application to be *too* fast?
If the system responds so quickly to a user-initiated action that there's no indication that the application has completed a task, this can be detrimental to the user experience.
The usability ...
- 2,529
13
votes
How to tell the users about a unpredictably long process?
If the progress takes longer than a few seconds, you should think about the user-experience. You cannot expect the user to stare at a progress bar for one minute - the user will do something else in ...
- 2,138
12
votes
At what point does a user lose trust in a Busy Spinner?
According to this article from NNGroup based on cognitive psychology studies:
after 1 second the user might start to lose his flow of thought about the current process.
after 10 seconds the user will ...
- 11.5k
11
votes
What are the pros and cons of using a branded preloader?
In my experience, users see a pre-loader as an indication of slowness. Simply removing the pre-loaders from one project reduced the number of performance complaints. Branded ones would be even worse, ...
- 291
11
votes
How to let users know that updates are not real time
Second choice is better to manage user expectations about estimated time.
You can create background process auto refresh every X second for update estimated time left, so user don't need to refresh ...
- 251
9
votes
Why do some automated phone systems use a typing sound effect?
This is quite common on some IVR systems, and it's intended to transmit the idea of work is being done and the system didn't hang up.
Think about this: if a human person attended the phone, you could ...
- 38.2k
9
votes
How to tell the users about a unpredictably long process?
Besides all mentioned above, I would suggest adding intermediary updates, e.g.
Loading...
Still loading...
Yet still loading...
If the text changes it'll give a clue to the user that process is ...
- 1,763
7
votes
Accepted
Do top, or left aligned field labels perform better at form completion?
There are many articles which recommend TOP ALIGNED over LEFT ALIGNED.
It’s clear that top aligned and infield labels aren’t the quickest and easiest to scan, but what’s a better approach? The better ...
- 6,641
6
votes
How to tell the users about a unpredictably long process?
If you can't make the wait informative, at least make it entertaining.
For example, on a certain web site Bill Shatner makes some funny faces and hand gestures while a notoriously slow system is ...
- 804
6
votes
At what point does a user lose trust in a Busy Spinner?
Ten seconds and after that I start thinking "this is not working" and I worry in about my credit card being or not being processed or being processed twice if I have to do this again.
It is good to ...
- 1,322
6
votes
Why do some automated phone systems use a typing sound effect?
I'm not 100% sure what exact sound you are referring to. In my personal experience they usually either clicking sound that goes up and down in volume or they often do have a person say "Please wait ...
- 221
5
votes
At what point does a user lose trust in a Busy Spinner?
Sorry you're all quoting old research. Google has updated this.
125ms the user expects a response of some kind like a loading icon showing up after click.
250ms user starts to notice the action is ...
- 821
5
votes
How to tell the users about a unpredictably long process?
Assuming one minute is as fast as your process is going to get, and this is a critical component, I would consider coordinating with Engineering to modify the approach so it no longer takes place in a ...
- 299
5
votes
Accepted
Should a flash of unstyled content (FOUC) be addressed by hiding everything until it all can be displayed with styles?
It depends on what the user is expecting, how much time will the waiting be, if a lack of style makes the website look chaotic and unusable, etc.
For example, in a portfolio website the style (or ...
- 16.9k
5
votes
Accepted
How long should the user wait before providing reassurance?
...authentication can take anywhere between 3 seconds and 1 minute...
I'd recommend starting with your basic animation, then add additional feedback as time elapses.
An example
A video game I play ...
- 19.6k
4
votes
How to make waiting time when connecting to a conference better for the user?
Using a Phone ringing audio with an animating phone icon will be best in this situation. Since you mentioned that the average wait time could be 10 seconds - it should not be an issues with the users ...
- 16.2k
4
votes
How long should the delay be before a tooltip pops up?
It really depends on what your tooltips are for.
We've got lots of toolbar controls and buttons which simply use the Material Design Icon set with no text. Most of these are self explanatory but we'...
- 181
4
votes
What are the pros and cons of using a branded preloader?
You are answering you own question. If the loading is fast enough, the user is not even going to see the loader.
What is fast enough?
0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that ...
- 4,225
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