Show progress bar What's the use

Now all of us are accustomed to displaying a progress bar to the user in the interface that needs to wait for a long time in the product. But what good does it do? Some people may think that the provision of progress bar to make our products more "humane", this is not wrong, but why the progress of the bar will make people feel more "humane" it?

Windows file copy progress bar

Version b fmis export progress bar

C Version Fmis progress bar

Recently, Zhuhai released a rotten film, called "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", see the friends remember that there is a special hourglass. The hourglass will be slow as people talk: If the conversation is hot, the hourglass will flow very fast, but if the conversation is boring, the hourglass will be half dead. Do not know why, I think this hourglass is very "humanized", because I also often have such experience: with friends happy to get along, time is always too fast, and boring when the time is always feel slow to die, the bar must hurry past.

In fact, time is always like that, but our feelings will mislead us. We create an illusion of time in order to create a sense of psychological satisfaction: we are able to control time, so that we can feel safe.

Think about it, if we don't know exactly how time flows, do we get into a sense of insecurity? Imagine take off your watch, turn off the phone clock, cut off the power of the computer, so that you can not find any clock around 10 kilometers, never hear the hour hand ticking around, see each other, how will you? The uncertainty of time often leads to insecurity, instability, and a feeling that something is wrong. Because we have grown accustomed to seeing the march of time, the regular evolution of time has represented one of the most important laws of nature in our lives.

That's why some people hate to wait aimlessly. For example, when waiting at a bus stop, such people will be impatient, and if you know exactly how much the car will come in a few minutes, it will be a lot more stable. There are also some crossroads, to the ordinary traffic lights to increase the number of countdown, which is said to greatly reduce the number of pedestrian red light.

Losing a sense of time can also easily get us into hallucinations. The simplest example is the jet lag. Obviously already Beijing time 9 o'clock, but the sky in Lhasa is still very bright, you may be a little sleepy, but still will be strong fighting spirit because the sky is not black.

That's why Macau's casinos often find ways to make you lose sense of time. Casino design is deliberately no windows, do not place a clock, so that you try not to focus on the time, so that they mistakenly think they are still sober, can continue to gamble day and night.

In other words, the progress bar makes people feel "humane" because it returns to a natural law that allows people to control time (or feel like they are in control of time).

Moreover, the constantly changing progress bar will also allow users to produce hallucinations, obviously after the same time, but it is not so painful, but also seems to be relatively fast. Do you remember the hourglass? Magic Hourglass is the progress bar for chatting.

There are many examples of progress bars in life, such as when you call a customer service phone, you will be reported in the first few sequence, in the bank for business to pick up the number of cards, tell you there are several, and so on.

Help our users control time, give them a sense of security, let them feel their time is not wasted, at the very least, let them say goodbye to the terrible waiting for aimless. Don't let them feel like they're on a plane that doesn't know how long it will take to reach their destination.