
Artificial waiting in user interfaces (2016) - monort
https://www.fastcompany.com/3061519/the-ux-secret-that-will-ruin-apps-for-you
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cVwEq
Reminds me of an experience I had in a college C++ course.

The professor was notorious for being a real tough grader. For my final
project, I wrote a command line file encryption/decryption program. But, it
encrypted and decrypted practically instantaneously. Since we had to
demonstrate the program real-time in the computer lab to him, I was worried he
wouldn't believe it actually did anything. So I added a delay and a progress
bar for effect.

When I demonstrated the program, as the progress bar was going, the professor
audibly said "oh good!" I was thinking in my head "oh yeah!" So I guess the
effect worked.

He still docked me 5% points because the final decrypted file had an extra
newline at the end. LOL

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killbot5000
It seems like this is being used as a cheap tactic to avoid giving users
meaningful and accurate feedback. Eg the loan approval example, if the user
was presented with the details of what got them the approval instantly, it
might be more convincing than an instantaneous response with no rational. The
artificial wait just gives the space for the user to make up a cause for the
delay and walk away with a completely incorrect perception about how the
system works, which is great if your goal is to manipulate people’s behavior
using psychological tricks.

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ldarby
The first thing I do on a new windows PC (and android phones nowadays) is turn
off all the animations, menu fades etc. for an instant performance boost.

I wish I could also disable those lightbox image loaders on web pages that
slowly fade in images, as if the webmaster was worried that displaying it too
quickly might give someone a heart attack or something.

The public has been duped into accepting slow interfaces, and it pisses me
off!

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phonypc
I don't like the restaurant analogies. If it were possible to cook a steak to
your liking in a single minute, you might worry the first few times that it
was just being prepared ahead of time, not cooked fresh. But that should pass
when you eat the steak and enjoy it.

Similarly, it might take some adjusting to really fast UIs, but I feel like
we'd be better off adjusting rather than this nonsense.

~~~
mruts
People don’t want their food to come out fast. They want to sit, drink a beer,
talm, etc. Unless it’s fast food, people go to restuarants to have a 1-3 hour
experience, not to get calories as quickly ad possible.

~~~
cco
I think you've missed the forest for the trees in the posters analogy.

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userbinator
I suspect the more people know about this, the more likely they are to not
like being delayed, but then again, general "bloatyness" seems to have taken
over (and maybe even using this as an excuse) in UIs, and a certain group of
people seem intent on trying to manipulate and otherwise persuade users to be
less knowledgeable...

The right mindset shouldn't be "[assuming] it must have been really hard to
get that information", but rather "we now have computers that can do
_billions_ of operations per second, and it takes _how long_ to do _what_!?"
Every time I come across a webapp that is probably making me wait, maybe just
to show a UI, that's what comes to mind.

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azhenley
This is an interesting psychological effect. Sure, it wastes time but people
seem to expect/need it in order to trust a system.

There has been some research on effectively using wait time, such as doing
small educational tasks while something loads, that I wonder if they could be
integrated for a win-win. For example: _Wait-Learning: Leveraging Wait Time
for Second Language Education_
([https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702267](https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2702267))

