Comment by brlewis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brlewis | Hacker News Reader

This article lumps a lot of techniques together that are fundamentally different. The ones that are actual deception are not benevolent, and the ones that are benevolent are not actually deception.

Deception is leading someone to believe something that isn't true.

If a deliberate delay is added to a UI to make it clear to the user that actual work is being done, this is not deception. You are leading the user to believe something that actually is true. The natural instantaneous UI is the deceptive one for a user who is led to believe that no actual work happened.

A fake progress bar that shows steady progress when the actual work is stuttering is not benevolent, unless you can be sure the operation will finish in a fixed amount of time approximately at the end of the progress bar. This kind of deception is irritating and not benevolent.

A fake progress bar like the way change.org petitions make it look like people are voting up the petition right now? That is deception, and regardless of the merits of the particular petition I don't think it's benevolent.

I think you've just redefined 'deception' as things you don't like.

How is it not deceptive to make a user wait longer than the task takes? (Perceived benefit aside)

How is it not benevolent to make the progress bar smooth even if the underlying process is not?

Most users don't and shouldn't need to understand a process that may not progress linearly.

The article is pretty clearly operating on a definition of 'deception' where it means showing the user something different than the underlying process.

Can you rephrase your questions so that it's clear what answer you're looking for? As written their answers appear to be verbatim what I wrote in the comment you're replying to.

> If a deliberate delay is added to a UI to make it clear to the user that actual work is being done, this is not deception.

It is deception. It's less obvious in case of a program, but imagine it when you're using some service in real life. You bring in a car for repairs, the mechanic says "right, I'm doing it now", goes to the other room and starts reading a newspaper. After some deliberate delay, fixes an obvious issue in a minute and comes back to you saying the job is done.

Still think that's not deceptive?

I think it depends. If the mechanic is attempting to mislead the customer by insinuating longer or more difficult work then it's deceptive. But if it's because customers refuse to believe that their car could be fixed so quickly and assume that no work had been done then I don't think so.

It's not deceptive - there's no commitment or understanding that the only thing he's doing when out of sight is work on your car. (And they don't bill based on how long they're gone - they bill based on how long they actually work on the car, in theory.)

On a computer, however, users generally assume that results are being delivered as fast as possible, even though in reality there's usually other things eating cycles.

I think the difference is the amount of time. In your mechanic example, I have to wait probably a few minutes extra. Maybe total time goes from 15 to 25 minutes. 10 minutes is a significant time.

When dealing with computers however, the time goes from 100ms to 2 seconds. People generally don't mind.

Absolutely this. It's the time difference.

The mechanic could say "I'm very experienced with this kind of repair and was able to perform it quickly" in a lot less time than it would take to read a newspaper in the next room.

The computer can say, "We checked your taxes against 2,683 rules in 0.002 seconds" but the user would take as long to read this as it would take to insert an artificial delay.

But stepping back a bit for context, the only reason I'm pointing out the benevolence -- or at least harmlessness -- of this kind of artifice, is to also point out that the article lumps it in with real deception. This looks to me like an attempt to create a slippery slope toward excusing all kinds of deception.

Only if he's billing me for more hours worked. He can both say that he's working on it right now and go to the break room to read a newspaper and be truthful. Lunch breaks and small breaks before/after lunch are a thing in some workplaces.

I would think that fake progress bars about "triple checking" your taxes would fall into that latter categorization.

Definitely, that one is bad. I don't care for you to show me what you did in an animation I just want to go to the next step. Stop wasting my time.

Though I did find some steps where it made you think it was checking stuff you could actually hit continue and it would work all the same but cut the animation short.

I wonder if they have focus groups and it works for the masses makes them feel happy or acfomplished, but for the long tail it's just frustrating.

Would be nice to disable such animations.

> Would be nice to disable such animations.

Indeed. If you have an Android phone you can try turning off all kinds of animations from the dev options. I always do that and my phone feels so much faster.

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