Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In 1984, the 29-year-old Jobs decided to launch a home computer for individual users.

At the press conference, he set the program for the first generation of Mac (Macintosh) to "introduce himself" and amazed the audience.

The first generation of Mac realized the wide application of graphical user interface to personal computers for the first time, and it even "sang, danced, and rap". Since then, the computer, which he called "the most beautiful work of his life," has become an instant hit, selling for as much as $2495, but it has been snapped up and entered tens of thousands of families.

But even as strong as Jobs, there was a flaw in the design of the computer: it only changed the pointer cursor into a dial when it was loaded, without any hint.

Imagine that you want to play a computer game, but after clicking the icon, the computer does not respond. You feel a little hesitant and wonder if you want to click again. When you look at your watch for the third time, the game finally opens.

Finally finished a level, the screen suddenly static, you do not know whether it is out of the BUG or loading the next level, you do not even know whether the computer is running, all you can do is wait and wait indefinitely.

The combination of 128KB memory and tortoise crawling speed, coupled with no hints, brings such a maddening scene.

Jobs and Macintosh computers this is not a mac-specific problem, in fact, no manufacturer knew how to deal with the anxiety caused by users waiting.

It wasn't until a year later at the human-computer interaction conference that a young computer doctor, Brad Myers (Brad Myers), came up with a very simple solution.

Progress bar (progress indicator).

Small progress bar, great effect before 1984, there is actually a progress indicator, but it is not particularly popular, and the designer did not realize that the role of progress bar is so great.

It was not until Miles did a small experiment that people began to realize the huge role of seemingly humble progress bars.

He asked two groups of students to operate the computer with or without a progress bar, and 86% of the students reported that they liked the design with a progress bar.

I don't quite understand the result-what about the other 14%? Have you never used a computer? Even they don't care whether the progress bar is accurate or not, as long as there is an indicator there, they can sit in front of the computer and wait.

The progress bar can be incarnated as a "pacifier" for users so that they don't have to fidget in front of the computer.

In front of the progress bar, even the passage of time feels faster.

The human body does not have organs that directly perceive time, and some rhythms within the body can give us a sense of time, such as heartbeat, diet and sleep, which makes time perception highly subjective.

Einstein joked: "sitting on a park bench with a beautiful girl for an hour is like a minute, but putting your hand on the stove for a minute is like an hour."

This is really what Einstein said. Compared with the blank interface, the progress bar allows us to experience the passage of time, and different progress bars will have different effects.

For example, the researchers found that spiral stripes made subjects feel that time passed faster than flatter ones.

He also found that if the whole progress bar is divided into many small pieces equally, and when the progress bar is pushed forward one by one, the smaller the length of the block at the same speed, the faster people will feel that time passes.

When we move at the same speed, we will think that the progress bar with more dots running faster makes people more patient, and more motivated to change the sense of time, the progress bar can make people "put up with what ordinary people can't stand".

When people use computers, each operation needs to get a visual feedback, the existence of this feedback can improve the user's patience to wait.

Jakob Nielsen, an expert in the field of user research, said that users are at risk of quitting the program as long as they do not give feedback for more than a second, and the use of progress bars can greatly reduce the risk of users quitting the program and increase their waiting time.

Progress bars can even make people perform better when doing tasks. For example, the researchers randomly divided the subjects into two groups to complete the experimental task, providing progress information to one group and not to the other group.

It turns out that providing progress information not only improves accuracy and reduces reaction time, but also makes people more motivated and requires less rest time.

The progress bar with progress information group (solid line) performs better than that without progress information group (dotted line), but in fact, is the progress bar accurate or not? Hardly accurate, because the program loading progress is difficult to calculate and can only be estimated.

Estimate the progress bar time in advance, but in the end, the actual loading time is longer than this time, what should I do?

Just stop the progress bar at 99%. So you'll see a lot of programs stuck in the last 1%, even if the remaining process of the entire task is much more than 1%.

But as mentioned above, it doesn't matter whether the progress bar is "true" or "false". If there is a progress here, human beings will feel much more at ease.

The hidden progress bar looks like a random progress bar, but in fact there are a lot of clever ideas.

Tired of monotonous loading patterns? Designers can present you with creative and lovely progress bars, and some programs even set the progress bar to a stand-alone Mini Game, allowing you to spend waiting time in relaxation and entertainment.

There are also some types of progress bars that give us "comfort" by manipulating shape changes. For example, the progress bar can speed up slightly at the beginning, slow down the middle section, and then have a sliding shovel when it is about to be finished, straight to 100%!

Increasing the number of chunks, making the progress bar "turn faster", or setting the rotation direction to the opposite direction of the progress bar can also make people think that the speed has increased.

Other designers have found that people prefer one with a clear starting point and end point to a progress bar that shows uncertainty (left).

Even if the progress bar has been stuck at 95%... The emergence of progress bar stems from the intolerable uncertainty of human beings and the pursuit of a sense of control.

But in reality, there are many things we can't predict the future, such as love, longevity, etc., and there is no convenient real-time progress bar to tell you how far these things are going.

In the face of uncertainty, some people choose to try to create their own progress bar in life: set detailed goals, set milestones, and pay attention to current progress all the time.

Others choose to embrace the complete unknown, muster up courage, endure discomfort, and enter the dark wilderness shrouded in fog.

No matter which road you choose, good luck!

reference

1. Raczkowski, F., & Shnayien, M. (2019). History and Aesthetics of Progress Indicators. Tekniikan Waiheita, 37 (3), 57-67. Https://doi.org/10.33355/tw.86775

2. Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJI88QIW7H4&t=1406s

3. Myers, B. A. (1985). The importance of percent-done progress indicators for computer-human interfaces. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, 16 (4), 11-17. Https://doi.org/10.1145/1165385.317459

4. Harrison, C., Yeo, Z., & Hudson, S.E. (2010). Faster progress bars. Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems-CHI'10. Https://doi.org/10.1145/1753326.1753556

5. Ziat, M., Saoud, W., Prychitko, S.S., Servos, P.P., & Grondin, S. (2022). Malleability of time through progress bars and throbbers. Scientific Reports, 12 (1). Https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-14649-1

6. Li, W., Wang, M., Li, W., Cai, B., & Shi, Y. (2020). An Improvement on the Progress Bar: Make It a Story, Make It a Game. Advances in Usability, User Experience, Wearable and Assistive Technology, 394-401. Https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51828-8_51

7. Nah, F. F. Murray H. (2004). A study on tolerable waiting time: how long are Web users willing to wait? Behaviour & Information Technology, 23 (3), 153,163. Https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290410001669914

8. Https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-limits/

9. Https://isux.tencent.com/articles/106.html

10. Devine, S.S. & Otto, A. R. (2022). Information about task progress modulates cognitive demand avoidance. Cognition, 225, 105107. Https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105107

11. Https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/12/best-practices-for-animated-progress-indicators/

12. Katzir, M., Emanuel, A., & Liberman, N. (2020). Cognitive performance is enhanced if one knows when the task will end. Cognition, 197, 104189. Https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104189

13. Harrison, C., Amento, B., Kuznetsov, S.S. & Bell, R. (2007). Rethinking the progress bar. Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology-UIST'07. Https://doi.org/10.1145/1294211.1294231

14. Https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/components/status/progress-indicators/

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: fruit Shell (ID:Guokr42), author: general Hei, Editor: Emeria, Youyou, odette

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