152
votes
Accepted
How to display duration (HH:MM) so it isn't confused with clock time
You are right to ask this question. It really depends on who your users are.
In labor-intensive environments, users are often very familiar with the HH:MM notation for duration, so it's OK to use ...
- 40.6k
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 ...
- 10.7k
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 ...
- 5,648
77
votes
Is there any research showing whether relative or absolute times are easier for humans to read?
You could also show both formats: 13:35 (2 hours ago)
This way the user could figure out either one easily, depending on what they wanted. You could also allow searching/filtering by either.
- 1,077
60
votes
Is there any research showing whether relative or absolute times are easier for humans to read?
I'm not sure about hard research, but there's a good article from UX Movement:
Absolute vs. Relative Timestamps
When to use absolute timestamps:
There are times when users need to look back on past ...
- 23.8k
57
votes
Accepted
How to best display number of hours
Jira has a great and clear way of doing this when entering time estimates in the task estimate field, simply using 1 letter after the weeks (w), days (d), hours (h) and minutes (m).
By not allowing ...
- 2,674
46
votes
Which is a more intuitive open hours and days schedule board?
Why make the user click when they don't have to? You could easily show all of the open and closing times for the week, and I don't think it would be information overload as the user will already know ...
- 2,640
36
votes
Accepted
Simplify an interface for flexibly applying rules to periods of time
Try showing them visually, as they build the restriction and exemption times. With each criterion added, the timeline updates.
I'm not sure I fully understand your use case, but it sounds like users ...
- 23.8k
31
votes
Accepted
Representation of Timer in "Deal Expires in MM SS"
According to me, the best option would be to use 59m 59s.
This will surely help a user to understand the time available without any confusion. Here the labels are clearly visible at the first glance ...
- 1,191
29
votes
How long should a temporary notification (toast) appear?
It varies, but for English language...
Generally the time taken to read a flash notice will vary according to the complexity of the information, length of notice, and focus/distraction level of the ...
- 40.6k
28
votes
Accepted
Is the mental model of time advancing to the right in charts globally accepted?
The mental image of time is indeed thought to be influenced by language and culture.
Scientists discovered years ago that spatial representations of time
are affected greatly by linguistic ...
- 14.3k
27
votes
Accepted
which is more intuitive time picker?
In my opinion, Option 2 is the most user friendly.
Reasoning:
If the hour has its own up and down arrow you do not expect that using the up and down arrow of the minutes can change the hour as well. ...
- 17.2k
25
votes
How to display duration (HH:MM) so it isn't confused with clock time
A plus sign is sometimes prefixed to the time format indicate offset. It can also imply duration. For example:
+4:00 +10:00 +4:00
+6:00 +0:00 +6:00
- 389
23
votes
How to display duration (HH:MM) so it isn't confused with clock time
Another possibility would be to add a "prime" mark at the end, as is sometimes (often in race times) used. Minutes and seconds would look like 4′33″, so a single prime is minutes, so use 1:30′ for an ...
- 351
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 ...
- 3,848
18
votes
How to display duration (HH:MM) so it isn't confused with clock time
You can also show the minutes with a smaller font.
On stopwatches, this is done for the seconds or milliseconds.
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
- 12.5k
16
votes
How to display duration (HH:MM) so it isn't confused with clock time
The international standard ISO 8601 would suggest P04:00 or P4H. Its part on periods, durations or time spans and repetitions, though, is hardly ever followed – and you aren’t using its date format in ...
- 2,490
15
votes
Which time format to use in a flight booking?
Times for flights are almost always given as local time in a 24-hour
format.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/83626/how-to-read-time-of-flight-for-emirates-airline
Most airlines use ...
- 3,719
14
votes
How to display duration (HH:MM) so it isn't confused with clock time
You could use decimals. So for example:
90 minutes would be 1.5 hours instead of 1:30
3 hours and 45 minutes would be 3.75 instead of 3:45
This format is highly scannable and makes it easier to sum ...
- 157
13
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 ...
- 4,403
13
votes
How to best display number of hours
Standard format for time (and time intervals less than 24 hours in duration) is set by ISO 8601.
Using extended format (hh:mm[:ss]) fits best (note :!), clearly conveying time nature of the value.
...
- 259
11
votes
Is the mental model of time advancing to the right in charts globally accepted?
In the Arabic world, time series charts are more often shown as right-to-left, as this flows more naturally with reading from right-to-left. Al Jazeera (a large Arabic based news organisation) for ...
- 67.7k
11
votes
Which time format to use in a flight booking?
Make your decision based on your user's location. So, someone in the USA will see AM/PM times and someone in Qatar will see 24H.
Having just one of the two will confuse users of the other region.
...
- 7,865
11
votes
Representation of Timer in "Deal Expires in MM SS"
Kishan I would step back and approach it from a deeper UX perspective; who are your users, what are they doing, what information is pertinent to them?
When you delve a little deeper, the answers ...
- 111
11
votes
Unit to display for 00:00 minute:second format
You can make something like :
11h32m
or
18m17s
Which is both short and pretty clear.
- 111
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 ...
- 151
10
votes
How long should a temporary notification (toast) appear?
I'm surprised that no one has flagged this as an accessibility concern. I recommend that you avoid having timed messages at all because you can't determine how long it takes for someone to not only ...
- 4,174
10
votes
Is there any research showing whether relative or absolute times are easier for humans to read?
When you use absolute timestamps, you need to find out which timezone the user is in. This can be a guess based on IP address (which may be wrong) or a setting in the user profile (which needs to be ...
- 449
10
votes
Why "posted a minute ago" instead of time?
Faster comprehension at the expense of accuracy.
If I told you:
I began typing this answer at 10:14:25 AM on December 6, 2017
that would require you to know the current time and then compare it ...
- 19.3k
10
votes
Representation of Timer in "Deal Expires in MM SS"
Why don't you just give the actual time until expiry? At the moment, you're proposing to tell me that the offer expires "in one day". But what does that mean?
Let's say it's 3pm on Thursday. It ...
- 1,583
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible