"Your phone needs to communicate with
Google servers to sign in to your account.
This may take up to five minutes"
Programmers, in trying to be completely transparent, sometimes get confused and think that the user actually cares how the app is doing what it needs to do.
... sometimes get confused and think that the user actually cares how the app is doing what it needs to do.
Can you share some links to research showing what users do care about, or research showing that they actually not not care how the app is doing what it needs to do?
A user might be interested in knowing that the app wants to "connect to google" but that same user might not care to know that the app wants to "start a tcp session with google servers in order to connect to a web service that gives it the required data"
Obviously I'm exaggerating, but you get the point.
Obviously I'm exaggerating, but you get the point.
I understand what it is you think is true, and anecdotally it sounds about right, but I'm hoping to get past folklore and guesswork to understand what does or does not work for users.
I've been surprise, when helping ostensibly non-tech people, the number of times I get asked, "OK, but why" when I try to offer a simplified description of what an app is doing.
If something seems to take a long time, and I were to say, "The program needs to connect to Google," I am certain the people I've helped would want to know a bit more.
Maybe details about TCP sessions would be too much; the question is, based on actual research, what is the right amount of detail, and how should it be presented?
Maybe there is no such research; even knowing that would be helpful.
They compare "77 other people +1'd this, including Larry Page." to "Larry Page and 77 others +1'd this."
The latter definitely sounds better, but I suspect most users care more about # of likes than an individual person, as usually the individuals aren't particularly noteworthy.
I'd rather separate these two pieces -- a larger icon with # of likes, and a list of people to the right
The significance is not in the individual person itself it is in that they know the individual person and will have a deeper connection with them than a number of unknown people they have never met.
I feel like the third example should be "What do you want to do?" rather than "Do you want to close it?" The way it is now, I expect a Yes/No question, but instead I get 3 actions.
Programmers, in trying to be completely transparent, sometimes get confused and think that the user actually cares how the app is doing what it needs to do.