Although it's an extreme example, TDWTF's latest post shows an interesting concept: purposefully pausing an app to show a progress bar, to convince users that it's doing something.
This kind of thing came up before in an answer I gave - I suggested that a spinner be shown even if saving is instantaneous.
Obviously you don't want to slow down access to your app, but in small quantities, can this improve people's perception of your app?
Answer
The idea that you should show users your app is responsive is spot on, but I don't think arbitrarily slowing your application down is the way to do it. Instead, I would use success notifications, and make sure buttons have hover and active states (depression on mousebutton), to help communicate that my app is responsive and that the user's action has a reaction in the service.
For things like save buttons, the simplest way to do this is to have the save button transform into 'Saved!' after the action completes. Users have focus on the area, so they'll spot the change even if it's quite minor. You can then revert the save button's state once the user starts modifying content.
No comments:
Post a Comment