[Tfug] Progress indicators

[Bexley Hall]

Hi, Tim,

--- On Wed, 1/14/09, Tim Ottinger <tottinge at gmail.com> wrote:

> Bowie J. Poag wrote:
> > Better to overinform the user into a state of
> > amusement than underinform them into a state of suspicion.
>
> Actually, that has side-benefits.  If they know what's
> going on they might be able to tune the machine, or at least
> figure out what not to run at the same time. 

<frown>  Dubious value (for my apps).  They're running what they
are running, too late now!

> I've bounced around on this until I suddenly realized
> that I don't have any single opinion about progress
> indicators that I can defend.  "... and he received
> enlightment."  This really is a difficult, soft
> problem.

Yes, it is roughly a parallel with the "A Sense of Time"
thread I started some months back.  Coming up with the
"right" answer is tough since all answers are "wrong"
for different reasons.  :<

The example that (I'm sure) we all think of is transfering
files:  progress == bytes transfered / total transfer.

But, think of other, less "tangible" tasks:
- sorting an address book
- installing an application
- vacuuming a database
- garbage collection
etc.

In the file transfer case, the user can relate to the size of
the file and can think of progress in terms of how much of it
has been transfered.  They can think of it as a *thing* having
real "dimensions".

But, what about these other tasks?  Do you express the
"number of addresses sorted"?  The number of bytes of
an application that have been decompressed?   etc.

Usually, people want to know:  that progress is being
made (because they are *so* accustomed to things "going
wrong"/crashing) and *when* they can expect to be done.

E.g., years ago, 3D renderings were 30 hour events for me.
The progress indicator was completely bogus --- i.e., a
count of rays traced, etc.   I would have liked to know
that it would be done "tomorrow at 3:27PM".

Of course, none of the things that I am talking about
here are comparable time sinks.  But, I *do* think people
want to know if this is going to be a "30 second wait"
or a "ten minute wait".

<frown>

--don