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Jochen FrommResponse Times: The Three Important Limits
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- The basic advice regarding response times has been about the same for thirty years [Miller 1968; Card et al. 1991]:
- 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.
- 1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.
- 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user's attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect.
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10 seconds: Limit for users keeping their attention on the task. Anything slower than 10 seconds needs a percent-done indicator as well as a clearly signposted way for the user to interrupt the operation. Assume that users will need to reorient themselves when they return to the UI after a delay of more than 10 seconds. Delays of longer than 10 seconds are only acceptable during natural breaks in the user's work, for example when switching tasks.
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Sofia PThe basic advice regarding response times has been about the same for thirty years
* 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the -
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Morten Just0.1, 1.0 and 10 seconds are the three main time intervals to be aware of.
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ame for thirty years
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- The basic advice regarding response times has been about the same for thirty years [Miller 1968; Card et al. 1991]:
- 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.
- 1.0 second is about the limit for the user's flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.
- 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user's attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done.
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In cases where the computer cannot provide fairly immediate response, continuous feedback should be provided to the user in form of a percent-done indicator [Myers 1985]. As a rule of thumb, percent-done progress indicators should be used for operations taking more than about 10 seconds.
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They reassure the user that the system has not crashed but is working on his or her problem; they indicate approximately how long the user can be expected to wait, thus allowing the user to do other activities during long waits; and they finally provide something for the user to look at, thus making the wait less painful.
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For example, a system searching an unknown number of remote databases could print the name of each database as it is processed. If this is not possible either, a last resort would be to use a less specific progress indicator in the form of a spinning ball, a busy bee flying over the screen, dots printed on a status line, or any such mechanism that at least indicates that the system is working, even if it does not indicate what it is doing.
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For reasonably fast operations, taking between 2 and 10 seconds, a true percent-done indicator may be overkill and, in fact, putting one up would violate the principle of display inertia (flashing changes on the screen so rapidly that the user cannot keep pace or feels stressed). One could still give less conspicuous progress feedback. A common solution is to combine a "busy" cursor with a rapidly changing number in small field in the bottom of the screen to indicate how much has been done.
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Robin PowellHow web load times affect user experience.
Pretty much everything on this site is good. -
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