

The progress bar illusion - dchest
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2010/12/best-videos-of-2010-progress-bar-illusion.html

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philwelch
If a download or something seems to be taking too long, I'll actually put the
point of my mouse cursor at the edge of the progress bar to see whether it's
stuck or just moving really really slowly. I really don't like these
illusions.

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phsr
Apple has been using the "left moving ripple" progress bar for a while, which
makes it look like the progress bar is moving, even when it's not

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ComputerGuru
In contrast with Microsoft, which switched from standard progress bars to
"right moving ripple" progress bars in Vista. Which, as the article states,
makes it look like it's moving _slower_!

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trotsky
Both still look like they're still moving when they're stopped though, which
is the real point of them. Tricking the user into believing the task will be
completed before it really will be isn't the goal - otherwise they'd
intentionally underestimate completion times when they're displayed.

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DougBTX
I think that actually is what they are designed to do, make it look like it
_is_ going to be completed sooner. If you just underestimate completion times,
the you'll have a 100% complete bar while still making the user wait - that
will make it look broken and slow, the opposite effect. Better to
overestimate, then the task will be completed "early" because it was so
"fast".

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InclinedPlane
This is exactly how people perceive execution time. If a progress bar goes to
completion and then hangs users will perceive that operation as taking longer
than if a progress bar goes to, say, 70% and then jumps to completion, even if
the total time of the operation is the same.

It makes sense though, people are the most impatient when they've been waiting
the longest so being surprised that the operation completed faster than they
were led to think it would is more welcome than having to wait longer than
they thought they'd have to.

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miguelpais
The biggest illusion of progress bars is when they don't accurately represent
the time left for something to complete. Like when you wait 7,5 minutes for
the bar to reach 75% and then it suddenly jumps to 100%, instead of taking
another 2,5 minutes to complete (that is frequent on installation processes).

Of course, when it comes to download progress bars it's not possible to make
it accurate without making it bigger as the download speed drops and making it
infinite/disable it when the speed is 0KB/s. But in other offline tasks the
progress bar is frequently useless to capture time remaining for the
completion of something.

That's probably why a time remaining label is added to them.

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billswift
Firefox is worse; it often immediately goes to about 75%, then just sits
there, then jumps to the end; it is the most useless progress bar I have seen
yet (and I have been using computers since Windows 3.1).

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narag
A small file could cause this. The browser starts to download the file to a
temporary directory, while the user is choosing the final location, so when
the progress bar appears, most of the file is already there, then the rest of
the file arrives at the same time that the system is creating the new file and
copying the contents from the temporary file to the location chosen by the
user. Disk file operations can block for an instant. When the bar is to be
updated again, the download is complete, so it simply vanishes.

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shalmanese
Rethinking the Progress Bar:
[http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars/index.htm...](http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars/index.html)

A paper that investigates how non-linear progress rates also affect perceived
completion time.

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erreon
The brain is a tricky thing. Even seeing this video I'm sure that the "left
moving ripple" progress bar still seems faster to us.

Can something like the be applied to the loading animations in webapps? If the
circle pulses or slows then speeds up randomly will it seem like the app is
working faster or slower for the user?

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mfukar
Despite the interesting content, I'm compelled to ask: does anyone actually
watch progress bars?

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narag
I do. Of course, for long file downloads. Some programs do it right. But, as
soon as I detect that certain progress bar is unreliable, I lose "interest"
:-)

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usedtolurk
This reminds me of a old story...

The residents in an apartment block kept complaining that the elevator was too
slow. The building's owners got several quotes to upgrade the elevator but
they were all too expensive and ran into many thousands of dollars.

Eventually they were approached by a old man who lived on the ground floor. He
said he could solve the problem for just a few hundred dollars. In desperation
they agreed to give it a try and a few days later all the complaints stopped.

His solution - simply install mirrors next to the elevators. It was enough of
a distraction that people didn't mind the wait.

I'm sure there are many more entertaining ways to distract than a simple
ripple.

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lkozma
Interesting illusion, but I wonder what is the desirable effect here.

I can imagine it being argued both ways:

1\. the bar should be animated so that it looks faster than it really is.

2\. the bar should be animated in the reverse way, so that _download_ is
actually faster than it seems from the bar, thereby giving a positive surprise
to the user.

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some1else
How about the illusion of aging 11% faster due to the spinning rainbow ball
that Apple has also been using?

