6 ms·
Nice post, but one has to wonder if it is self defeating. In the end "speed" is just a matter of expectation management. Suppose you had a website that could co
by tabeth 9y ago
Nice post, but one has to wonder if it is self defeating. In the end "speed" is just a matter of expectation management. Suppose you had a website that could complete all actions instantaneously. At this point I imagine speed would simply be redefined as the amount of time it takes you to find the desired action.
Surely there's a point where it's easier to just create a culture of patience than to pursue diminishing returns of shaving off nanoseconds.
TLDR: Is the better experience carefully crafted expectation management or simply being faster?
- Jonas_ba 9y agoI would say it depends on the current experience. For instance, if you have a slow site, make it faster but don't go into nanoseconds. If it's still slow afterwards, try faking speed (queue actions, improve render chain, caching etc). There were some studies that actually showed that loading just some resources and giving the user the "it's loading" message would actually have them question their connection/phone and not blame the slow experience on the website. Not good, but still better than having them blame it on you because then you lost them. However if the UX is still not good enough, you can go into milliseconds and really make it fast. That said, I'm positive that with the evolution of tools and languages + add some good affordable providers that offer fast CDN and easily configurable HTTP/2 features (Netlify for instance) most of the hard work will be taken away fromthe developers and making your site fast should not be something we'll have to focus on in the future because that's just the way they'll be made :)
- wongarsu 9y agoIn terms of workflow, faster is always better than patient. Above one second it feels like waiting on the computer, impeding workflow. Below ~200 milliseconds it feels instant. In most applications, going from 200 milliseconds to 100 milliseconds doesn't accomplish anything, but going from 1 second to 500 milliseconds allows for a better workflow and more exploration (waiting is a huge discouragement to exploration)
- tabeth 9y agoI'd argue that "exploration" is a failure to identify intent for most applications. This is probably the hardest UI/UX problem. Would you rather select a series of instantaneous actions select the "Do" button and within 5 seconds it will complete whatever you want, magically? It obviously depends on how long it takes you to select the actions, but I think it's an interesting thought experiment.
- wongarsu 9y agoI would agree that most exploration is a failure to identify intent. But in may cases, even the user would be unable to express his intent. Trying out various actions/settings and seeing the result is a powerful tool to let the user realize what he even wants.
- lcnmrn 9y agoI've gone from 200ms to 100ms on https://sublevel.net https://sublevel.net and it's a night and day difference. Trust me.
- jacquesm 9y agoIn e-commerce settings speed more or less directly translates into dollars. So a better experience definitely is something to strive for and not just a matter of 'expectation management'.
- tabeth 9y agoSpeed doesn't translate into dollars for the vast majority of use cases. Would you really suggest to an e-commerce startup to focus on speed and not building a great experience? Obviously you need to be fast enough, but there are diminishing returns. I fail to see how "a better experience" is not directly related to "expectation management." A certain experience is obviously something someone would expect, and therefore be managed.
- Jonas_ba 9y agoGo for the good experience first, define a good UI and make the site good to use. Once it's good to use, make it fast so that using it doesn't feel slow and users can get to what they want faster :)