Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Progress Feedback

If an action takes longer than 0.1 second, you need to provide some kind of feedback. Determining the type of feedback required depends on two things: how long the action takes and what kind of action it is.

If the action takes only one or two seconds, it’s OK to change the cursor to an hourglass or add a small “I’m working” indicator that doesn’t explicitly show how far the action has progressed.

The goal here is not to tell the user how long the action will take but to make it obvious that the computer has received the user’s command and is working on it. The word obvious is quite important. If you watch people using web browsers, ...