

Response Times: The 3 Important Limits (199X) - zyfo
http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html

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wittjeff
From a few years of testing and several hundred mainstream users I would add
to this: 4 seconds -- the trusted progress period: the approximate amount of
time you are allowed after the user clicks on something, after which some
users begins to suspect that perhaps things are not proceeding on track as
expected.

Example: User clicks on a web page link. Half of the next page is drawn
(clearly not finished). After about 4 seconds without visible progress, the
user will assume that the process has failed. A longer (>4 seconds) page
download/draw may be accomplished with progressive feedback.

Example: User enters some text and clicks a Search button in a desktop app. A
thermometer control shows initial progress, then stalls. Again, you get ~4
seconds in (apparently) stalled state before the user _starts_ thinking
something may be awry. (Time to actual give-up varies more).

Interestingly, lower-resolution progress feedback that includes animation is
vulnerable to the same threshold. So for example if instead of the progress
thermometer we simply put up an hourglass cursor, we can assume that some
users will start to question the integrity of the process after ~4 seconds of
watching the hourglass do its usual thing. Likewise with a barber pole/
thermometer that spins but doesn't grow. Normal animation, or rotating slide
shows, or whatever other easy-to-display distractions that we have come up
with, don't actually address this fundamental problem. I believe habituation
teaches even many naive users that those indicators cannot always be trusted.
Trusting the integrity of a process, after that 4 second threshold, requires
something progressive or novel. This makes getting through any process that
takes an unknown amount of time but more than 4 seconds a tricky unsolved
problem. I believe a higher level of novelty would extend the threshold
considerably, but the real key is demonstrating that the process is still
making tangible progress toward a known end goal.

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timedoctor
Totally agree that you should not separate the web from desktop applications.
The user doesn't care. They just want a fast response. Looking at an
application like workflowy.com it looks and feels like a desktop app when
using it. This is definitely the future.

I think 10 years from now any web page that has a 1 second response delay when
clicking on a link or doing something on the site will be considered totally
unacceptable usability ... um maybe make that 5 years :)

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watmough
Still true today, and highly applicable.

The most annoying example of a poorly responsive application I can think of
right now is the HULU app on my Roku. It is truly appalling, especially when
compared with the much much better Netflix app.

