3 examples of how providing progressive feedback could improve performance

 

Remember booking train tickets on the old IRCTC website? The long loading time used to spoil the performance of the website. Good that they improved with time.

As per a psychological principle called the Doherty Threshold, productivity soars when a system and its user interact within 400ms, ensuring no waiting time. However, the heavy computations performed these days (eg: loading recommendations on YouTube’s home page) make it difficult to optimize a load speed of 400ms. This makes it important for us to provide feedback to the user while processing is happening in the background. 

Following are three examples of how good products utilize feedback to keep up the performance as per users’ expectations.

#1 Instagram - Progress Indicator

When you post on Instagram, it takes time to process your request. During that time, Instagram provides an Indicator of ‘Finishing up’ for the users to stay engaged.

#2 Gmail - Loading Animation

Gmail provides a loading indicator as an animation of its logo to keep the user hooked to the platform. 

#3 Amazon - Placeholder

Amazon provides a progressive indicator of what is coming for the user. Moreover, the placeholders get filled as the respective content is loaded, not waiting for the whole page to load, thus, optimizing performance.

Book a slot for interactions: https://topmate.io/jayant_jain7/

Resources to learn how to improve usability using psychology principles

• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug (Paperback)
• Seductive Interaction Design by Stephen Anderson (Kindle | Paperback)
• Laws of UX by Jon Yablonski (Kindle | Audiobook | Paperback)