
Faster Progress Bars: Manipulating Perceived Duration [pdf] - danabramov
http://chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars2/ProgressBarsHarrison.pdf
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zschuessler
Link to the article so you can actually see test variables:
[http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/ProgressBars...](http://www.chrisharrison.net/index.php/Research/ProgressBars2)

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steveseow
Hey all, author of Designing and Engineering Time here. I am now a startup
evangelist with Microsoft, but very happy to revisit this timeless (no pun
intended) topic.

Remember that there is not only just actual duration vs perceived duration,
but also how much users are willing to tolerate a delay, and whenever I get a
question on how much people are willing to tolerate, I always ask if the users
know/appreciate the value/return of what they are waiting for.

The delta between what was perceived and what they expect or are willing to
tolerate, I submit, regulates user satisfaction. Some techniques manipulate
perception, others manipulate tolerance (or expectations) - both are as
effectively as actual code refactoring - but sure as hell cheaper.

Happy to share PDFs of the book and chat more. Ping me @steveseow

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corysama
Don't have a link, but I recall research showing greater user satisfaction if
you bias the progress bar to start artificially slow so that it can always be
slightly accelerating. The acceleration of the bar helps to cancel the
acceleration of the user's impatience.

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joseph_cooney
If you find this article interesting, you should check out the book 'designing
and engineering time'. Aside from having a great title it is filled with
interesting tips regarding perception and user interface design.

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InclinedPlane
Additionally, a progress bar which initially advances quickly but advances
slowly at the end is perceived to be slower than a progress bar that is purely
linear with respect to time. And a progress bar that starts slow then finishes
quickly at the end gives the perception that the task took less time than it
actually did.

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mistercow
I'm working on a side project (kind of on the backburner) JS library to drive
progress bars based on perceptual tricks like these, and using estimates
instead of actual progress monitoring (linear regression will be used to
adjust the estimates over time), and this is certainly good data to have for
that.

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MrMike
Is there a place I can sign up for updates on this?

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_stuart
Any studies that contrast progress bars with telling the user what % is
complete or how much time is remaining?

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Shish2k
I wonder how long until people get used to artificially-accelerated progress
bars, and we need to exponentially accelerated them to make people thing
things are going smoothly...

