forms - What to display while waiting for a process (4-5 seconds) to complete?

We realized that in some cases the user may be waiting up to 4 or 5 seconds (depending on connection) for their form (or some action) to be processed. The form involves getting data from other servers (facebook) and merging it with our own data then submitting to our server. So while this is all happening there will be some dead time.

Our initial reaction was the just use a spinner to indicate that something is occurring. Then we decided to make things fade and appear to kind of fake "speed". Then we thought we might be missing an opportunity to present really cool information or to delight the user.

Is there a standard approach for this specific use case, or is a spinner the appropriate method to take?

Answer

I like progress bars with stepped copy.

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