4 ms·

Great! More Academic articles about how to lie to users and convince them that your software is better than the competition without actually making it better.

by toomim 6y ago

Great! More Academic articles about how to lie to users and convince them that your software is better than the competition without actually making it better. Dark Patterns are the new Light Patterns!

toomim 6y ago
Here's another academic article about how to lie to your users from just 8 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26345283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26345283 Truth is so 1995. Nobody cares about honesty anymore!
- switch007 6y ago
  I wonder if we're happier when we're lied to. Reality kind of sucks
  - modzu 6y ago
    brave new world
    - gumby 6y ago
      Same old world
_Microft 6y ago
Thought experiment: two programs take exactly the same time to complete a task but one of them is perceived as slow and the other as fast (for whatever reason). Shouldn't this make the latter the better one of the two programs? At least I would count "being less annoying than the other program" (assuming that perceived slowness is annoying) as a positive feature.
- toomanyducks 6y ago
  If the only basis for perception of speed is essentially deceit, ``being less annoying'' means it lies to you more --- I don't think I'd call that an intrinsically positive feature.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    Why should the perception of speed have to be based on deceit? I bet I would perceive a progress bar that progresses with constant speed as faster than one that stalls and stutters even when both of them take the same time to completion. Even more if the alternative would be an indefinite progress indicator (hourglass pointer, spinner) that just goes away when the task finishes. On the other hand if the result is that a user is less annoyed by a process, I do not see why it should be wrong to convey that feeling artificially by setting up a situation in which the same result makes them feel better than in a more "honest" one (as you might call it?).
    - matthewrobertso 6y ago
      I definitely agree that showing a progress bar makes a slow operation feel faster, I've seen this work many times. I think I disagree about the constant speed vs stuttering progress bar example though - Progress bars which progress smoothly are great if they are accurate. But because sometimes a UI will show a fake progress bar smoothly filling that will empty after filling and fill again, I've been trained to become skeptical of them. I don't think I've ever seen a stuttery progress bar that was "fake" in that way.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      Showing a constant speed progress bar to hide stutter is effectively applying a low-pass filter. Since stutter carries information (that may not be of interest to all your users, but perhaps some), you're low-pass filtering that information. It is a deceit - you're purposefully concealing information, and you're doing it for some reason. How bad is that? It depends on how much a given piece of information is useful to the recipient. Smoothing out something where its high-frequency data matters to the user isn't nice (and can be paternalizing at times). Imagine your car speedometer didn't display instantaneous speed, but a running average over a one-minute window. Would you feel comfortable about it? Or if your bank account displayed your balance as a running average over a week-long window? Progress bars being accurate isn't that important for most, but it may be for some. In a same way you can get a feel for your car by listening to the sounds it makes, you can get a feel for the state of your computing environment by observing a progress bar. For example: does it seem to slow down hard whenever the "storage" light on your laptop is blinking fast (in the old days - when your HDD makes noise)? It may imply you have an issue with your storage. Smooth a progress bar out, and you're removing such environmental cues.
- 29083011397778 6y ago
  Because it's perceived as fast because users have been reading articles about how much faster the devs have made it (as in TFA). If you can consistently put out these articles to prime your users, and have you software still perform at the same speed as your competition, then either the devs aren't doing much at all, or marketing is more full of it than usual.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    > Want to speed up your Internet? Try Chrome! Literally, Google refused to let this go, for at least half a decade.
RedShift1 6y ago
I agree, instead of making it look faster, make it actually faster. Websites these days are filled with unnecessary crap that just slows things down, start by eliminating those things ffs.

by toomim 6y ago

toomim 6y ago

Here's another academic article about how to lie to your users from just 8 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26345283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26345283 Truth is so 1995. Nobody cares about honesty anymore!

switch007 6y ago
I wonder if we're happier when we're lied to. Reality kind of sucks
- modzu 6y ago
  brave new world
  - gumby 6y ago
    Same old world

_Microft 6y ago

Thought experiment: two programs take exactly the same time to complete a task but one of them is perceived as slow and the other as fast (for whatever reason). Shouldn't this make the latter the better one of the two programs? At least I would count "being less annoying than the other program" (assuming that perceived slowness is annoying) as a positive feature.

toomanyducks 6y ago
If the only basis for perception of speed is essentially deceit, ``being less annoying'' means it lies to you more --- I don't think I'd call that an intrinsically positive feature.
- _Microft 6y ago
  Why should the perception of speed have to be based on deceit? I bet I would perceive a progress bar that progresses with constant speed as faster than one that stalls and stutters even when both of them take the same time to completion. Even more if the alternative would be an indefinite progress indicator (hourglass pointer, spinner) that just goes away when the task finishes. On the other hand if the result is that a user is less annoyed by a process, I do not see why it should be wrong to convey that feeling artificially by setting up a situation in which the same result makes them feel better than in a more "honest" one (as you might call it?).
  - matthewrobertso 6y ago
    I definitely agree that showing a progress bar makes a slow operation feel faster, I've seen this work many times. I think I disagree about the constant speed vs stuttering progress bar example though - Progress bars which progress smoothly are great if they are accurate. But because sometimes a UI will show a fake progress bar smoothly filling that will empty after filling and fill again, I've been trained to become skeptical of them. I don't think I've ever seen a stuttery progress bar that was "fake" in that way.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Showing a constant speed progress bar to hide stutter is effectively applying a low-pass filter. Since stutter carries information (that may not be of interest to all your users, but perhaps some), you're low-pass filtering that information. It is a deceit - you're purposefully concealing information, and you're doing it for some reason. How bad is that? It depends on how much a given piece of information is useful to the recipient. Smoothing out something where its high-frequency data matters to the user isn't nice (and can be paternalizing at times). Imagine your car speedometer didn't display instantaneous speed, but a running average over a one-minute window. Would you feel comfortable about it? Or if your bank account displayed your balance as a running average over a week-long window? Progress bars being accurate isn't that important for most, but it may be for some. In a same way you can get a feel for your car by listening to the sounds it makes, you can get a feel for the state of your computing environment by observing a progress bar. For example: does it seem to slow down hard whenever the "storage" light on your laptop is blinking fast (in the old days - when your HDD makes noise)? It may imply you have an issue with your storage. Smooth a progress bar out, and you're removing such environmental cues.
29083011397778 6y ago
Because it's perceived as fast because users have been reading articles about how much faster the devs have made it (as in TFA). If you can consistently put out these articles to prime your users, and have you software still perform at the same speed as your competition, then either the devs aren't doing much at all, or marketing is more full of it than usual.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  > Want to speed up your Internet? Try Chrome! Literally, Google refused to let this go, for at least half a decade.

RedShift1 6y ago

I agree, instead of making it look faster, make it actually faster. Websites these days are filled with unnecessary crap that just slows things down, start by eliminating those things ffs.