3 ms·
To me, an indeterminate spinner says very clearly: no idea how long this may take. Progress bars provide more information, but might be at least as misleading a
by tgv 5y ago
To me, an indeterminate spinner says very clearly: no idea how long this may take. Progress bars provide more information, but might be at least as misleading as a spinner. My Netflix app typically loads a movie like this: 0% ... 34% ... 99% ... 99% ... 99% ... 99% ... 99% ... play, although sometimes it does: 0% ... 1% ... 2% ... 2% ... 54% ... play. Fortunately, the netflix progress indicator keeps spinning, so you sort of know that it's to be expected. If it were an unanimated progress bar, I would start suspecting an error when it gets stuck (as it routinely does).
- exodust 5y agoAgree, being stuck on 99% is worse than stuck on a loading spinner. The design problem that gets overlooked is how to inform users that things are taking longer than normal. Even the eventual fail message with "try again later" is often worded and designed without much consistency.
- sharken 5y agoIdeally no percentage increase should take more than maybe 10-15% of the total time. If the website or app consistently violates this, then it is time for a different design. But more often than not the "Good enough, ship it" wins out and the user experience is suffering. I can understand that time to market and maximizing profit is important, but at the second version the expectation is that it is improved. Google was very aware of this with their search engine, so these things matter.