Time as a UX Element: Designing for Waiting, Anticipation, and Patience

Most of us have already experienced the boredom of waiting for hours and hours for a flight, staring at a random spot and feeling like a couple of hours are actually days. On the other hand, waiting can create positive anticipation as well, like waiting for a movie to be released and see various teasers/exclusive information getting leaked. It creates value to the product and gets people excited to see the movie.

As UX designers, it is our job to work with time in order to create proper experiences, as most of the products include some sort of loading, waiting and delay.

Waiting Is An Emotional Thing

Time is relative and the perception of time is even more subjective to each individual, usually dictated by its state of mind. Attentional Models of Time Perception tackle exactly that, stating that time feels slower when focusing their attention on the delay and waiting itself. In addition to that, the memory of waiting can also be affected by the peak and end of a certain experience, theorized by the Peak-End Rule by Kahneman. For instance, when traveling to Rio de Janeiro, a person's memory probably will focus its memory on the soft sand and amazing views, rather than the 2-hour flight delay on the airport.

The absence of situational feedback can be quite damaging to a product. Due to the Hick's Law, which states that uncertainty about what is happening makes interactions feel longer than they actually are. An example: many government apps and websites have bad processing performance/speed, leading to agonizing experiences such as clicking to submit vital documents to an important process and the screen not showing any kind of feedback for over 15 seconds. It unnecessarily plays with user anticipation and anxiety, causing a suspense that will actively hurt the product's perception.

Acknowledging waiting is an essential part of designing for these kinds of products. It is the only way to transform frustration into tolerance.

The Psychology of Anticipation

As mentioned before, anticipation can enhance or destroy experiences. There is something called Anticipation Effect, where the experience of awaiting a future event can be more positive than the event itself. It unlocks our imaginations towards all the possibilities and best outcomes of this certain event, generating user satisfaction.

However, creating too much anticipation can also be detrimental if that expectation does not match the product experience itself. That is called Affective Forecasting, where people mispredict how happy or unhappy future events will make them. There is a very fine line between both worlds, and it is part of UX Design to work on that.

Anticipation is linked to dopamine release, which is highly correlated with a user's satisfaction. Therefore, if the outcome exceeds or matches expectations, satisfaction scores go up. And vice versa. With this in mind, product teasers or loading interactions/animations have immense value to a product performance. It allows the designers to gently nudge the user's frustration with waiting into tolerance. An amazing and very powerful, but simple solution utilizing this is the T-Rex game integrated on the Google Chrome Browser, that only appears when the user tries to open a page, and it realizes it has no internet connection. A simple Easter egg that eliminates a part of the frustration that comes with being offline.

Just like the T-Rex game, loading screen animations and other elements can become a key part of a product's storytelling. It creates value instead of frustration. In fact, it takes the gaps between interactions and make something meaningful out of it.

Designing with Time in Mind

Most apps have some kind of delay or waiting time. Moreover, designers can't always remove them, but they can shape the perception of such delays. With the principle of Feedback Loops, which is using immediate and meaningful feedbacks, it is possible to reduce the friction the delays can potentially cause. There are many different ways of utilizing this principle in design, in fact, there are several well-known examples:

• Netflix use countdowns to eliminate uncertainty and keep users engaged while waiting for the next episode (such as: “Next episode starts in 10 seconds")

• Duolingo utilizes progress bar animation and confetti/congratulations animations before showing the lesson's results. It makes the delay light and delightful.

• Instead of showing a blank screen, LinkedIn displays gray placeholders similar to the page being loaded, creating a sense that progress is being made and it gives users instant gratification. This is called Skeleton Screens.

• Uber shows the car's progress and motion in real time while waiting for the driver, or even during the actual ride. Although it doesn't really make the process itself faster, it reduces stress by making the wait predictable.

While developers and designers aim to make everything faster and more efficient, sometimes the best solution is to slow down users. Sometimes an extra step or click on a button might make everything feel safer. That is basically what entails the Illusion of Control, it makes the process a bit less dynamic and more structured, passing the perception that because it takes longer it is safer. Banking apps purposefully add delay steps, such as “processing step” to slow down the process and make users more comfortable with their decision, while also helping users avoid errors.

Conclusion

This is only scratching the surface into time perception, psychology and how can UX Design work upon those. Time is often a forgotten and essential part of user experience and immersion into a product. As a matter of fact, the difference between a successful product and a flopped experience is on the details, as small animations or structuring can be just the difference, allowing users to relax and fully enjoy each feature of the product.

“The subjective perception of time depends less on the clock and more on the intensity of attention and emotional involvement.” - Marc Wittmann