Progress Bars and Elevator Close Buttons Are The Scams of The Century
Picture this-
You are in a hurry. You enter the elevator to get out of the office as quickly as you can.
Once you are in, you start pressing the ‘close the door’ button in the elevator frantically.
Once the door closes and the elevator starts going down, you feel placated.
But the fact is, the ‘close the door’ button in the elevator is a fake! The door will close after a certain number of seconds elapse- no exception.
The elevator button is there just to trick you to believe that you have the power to close the door faster than normal. This way, you get less restless !
Similarly, when you load something in an app and the app shows a progress bar — more often than not, it is fake.
Most progress bars doesn’t show the actual progress. It just keeps on progressing 10% or 15% per second or every alternate second and stops at 95% or 98% level until the thing is loaded.
Why? This helps you believe that the system has not gone unresponsive. Psychologically, you remain relaxed thinking that the system is working.
Now suppose, there wasn’t any progress bar- just a basic loading icon. After a while, wouldn’t you feel restless? Because you have no idea how much percentage has been loaded.
The elevator button and the progress bar are what we call ‘benevolent deception’.
Here’s a sample code for a fake progress bar using JQuery
<div class=”progress progress-xlarge progress-striped active”>
<div class=”progress-bar progress-bar-danger” role=”progressbar” aria-valuenow=”0" aria-valuemin=”0" aria-valuemax=”100" style=”width: 90%;”></div>
</div>
<script>
var t = setInterval(function(){
var num = parseInt($(“.progress .progress-bar”).css(“width”));
if(num < 100) $(“.progress .progress-bar”).css(“width”, (num+1)+”%”);
else clearInterval(t);
}, 250);
</script>Originally posted on my LinkedIn profile
Follow me on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/agrawalmanoj2002/
