I have an app that does some prediction based on values that a user enters. The prediction works pretty fast – unnoticably fast, like 50ms or so.
However, I had the idea to use a progress bar to achieve the opposite effect: To introduce an artifical waiting time together with a sense of progress (hence, progress bar). This should convey the feeling that the app is working hard to make Your Personal Prediction and since the app appears to be calculating a lot of stuff, the prediction Must Be Totally Accurate.
Surely, the target users are not necessarily sophisticated technical people.
I haven't implemented it but I definitely want to try it out.
We had this issue on our website - our "Browse" is essentially an SPA that fetches results from an API upon any action being taken; such as sorting, pagination, adding filters etc. We had the fetching and rendering happening in an average of 30-50ms, which meant most users didn't even realise the page had refreshed apart from what appeared to be a faint blink on the whole page.
We actually had to put in a setTimeout() for 500ms with a loading gif, followed by an scrollTo() to the top of the results just so users would know something actually happened.
However, I had the idea to use a progress bar to achieve the opposite effect: To introduce an artifical waiting time together with a sense of progress (hence, progress bar). This should convey the feeling that the app is working hard to make Your Personal Prediction and since the app appears to be calculating a lot of stuff, the prediction Must Be Totally Accurate.
Surely, the target users are not necessarily sophisticated technical people.
I haven't implemented it but I definitely want to try it out.