3 ms·

You can make a UI feel responsive even if the underlying system is not performant. Let's say you have a client app with checkbox that toggles some boolean vari

You can make a UI feel responsive even if the underlying system is not performant. Let's say you have a client app with checkbox that toggles some boolean variable that communicates with a server. If you're on a 3g connection in an ambulance, it might take a few seconds to send that request to the server and get a response back. An unresponsive UI would sit there and make you wait for the request/response to complete. You click the checkbox, then nothing happens, then suddenly, some time later, the checkbox is checked and the page refreshes, or a state change happens. It's jarring and weird. A responsive UI would update the state of the app based on the user's actions even if the request hasn't completed yet. Tightly related to this the concept of optimistic UIs - the UI acts optimistically and updates the state of the app under the assumption that server-backed state changes will work. The iPhone's messages app sending messages is the prototypical optimistic UI interaction. You send a message, the blue / green speech bubble shows up on your messages app while the message is in flight. If it succeeds, nothing changes and you're none the wiser. If it fails, you get an option to delete the message or resend.

wool_gather 7y ago
Some (subtle) confirmation is nice, too, when the user is actively aware that the process is fallible. The Messages example you chose has this: a small gray "Delivered" tag is added below the message when the sending device hears back from the server.
mcguire 7y ago
Ever used one of those product search forms where you click that you want to see products with attribute A, a check appears, you go on to click on attribute B and a check appears there, and then the product list updates showing attribute A with a complete loss of B? A responsive UI is necessary, but it's not sufficient to make up for a slow back end.

wool_gather 7y ago

Some (subtle) confirmation is nice, too, when the user is actively aware that the process is fallible. The Messages example you chose has this: a small gray "Delivered" tag is added below the message when the sending device hears back from the server.

mcguire 7y ago

Ever used one of those product search forms where you click that you want to see products with attribute A, a check appears, you go on to click on attribute B and a check appears there, and then the product list updates showing attribute A with a complete loss of B? A responsive UI is necessary, but it's not sufficient to make up for a slow back end.