Past and present life of progress bar

As long as it is the user who deals with technology products, the progress bar is already ubiquitous, whether it is a blue progress bar for Windows 7 or a green progress bar for Windows 8, the progress bar from 0到100%, from empty to full The process, compared to users are basically accustomed to. But how many people have traced the history of the progress bar?

　　1986, interface designer Bobb Starr Bob Stahl wrote in an article in the computer World at the time : "People are waiting for things every day, and sometimes they are happy, sometimes not." The key is that the user feels about waiting. "In those days, machines were running very slowly and often crashed, and users didn't always know if their programs were crashing," he said. Starr suggested at the time that he would like to design a "progress bar" that would represent the process of processing bytes in the depths of the CPU to eliminate or at least mitigate this disappointment.

In the 1980, it became more urgent to make computers easier for users to master. At a meeting in 1985 of a new computer user interface, Brad A. Myers, a university graduate, submitted an article on the importance of a percentage progress indicator. Myers said that day (now he teaches at Carnegie Mellon University): "I think they are useful and important, but they are not widely used." He also told colleagues that the progress bar would reduce the impatience of computer users to wait, make them more efficient, and even allow them to take effective breaks at work.

To prove his point, Myers called 48 students, divided into two groups, with progress bar instructions and no progress bar instructions, run some search process on the computer database (at that time he designed a capsule-like shape that was filled from left to right, such as a large, labeled thermometer at the top). He then asked the students to grade the experience. As a result, 86% of the students said they liked the progress bar. "People don't care if it's accurate," Myers says. "They'd rather have a progress bar than nothing."

Since the 80 's, there are a variety of progress strips--sound, tactile--are proposed, but only this level of progress bar prevails. It has also been modified, and the progress bar now has a color, or it shows an animation that slides in the opposite direction. Chris Harrison, another scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, says these effects can fool the brain and make the progress bar appear to move faster. Because people hate to see the progress bar stop moving, or the task has stalled, the progress bar is still moving forward. For Harrison, the trick raises another question, "Do users want the truth, or do they want a relaxing experience?"

Here's a deeper question: is the progress bar a tool to make us more efficient, or is it a comfort to help us through our time? Early in the 20th century, the prototype of a progress bar, a schedule of paper and Pen Records, was a major innovation. "It uses all things, will not diminish, the ultimate element of human life-time, to refer to the expression." "Early project management pioneer (and dedicated to Marxist) Walter Polakov wrote in 1923 (translator note: Walter Polakov, the Soviet Union's first 5-year plan). "Because it is true to the human dimension, at the same time it is human and humane, so it eliminates the conflict between people and management, give full play to the practical role of human creativity, and harmony between life and work." ”

# Note: Busy indicator

Busy indicators do not estimate the time of the task, but they tell the user that the instruction is understood and accepted and that the computer is responding.