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Comment by csours | Hacker News Reader

The point is, don't have a static screen for 400ms after an interaction. If I click on something, and nothing at all happens for half a second, I feel a disconnect. A 400ms animation is a choice that you may not make, but does not 'feel' the same as a page load, or other stall.

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Feels the same to me... in fact, I'd probably prefer 400ms of a static screen to 400ms of animation. Withe the static screen I can blame my internet and not think much of of it, if I'm watching an animation I have to sit there and think about how the "designer" chose to force me to wait for them to twirl around and take a bow before I can move on.

Edit: Exact test of rule 2:

Productivity soars when a computer and its users interact at a pace (<400ms) that ensures that neither has to wait on the other.

Nowhere does it say that waiting is only bad if you don't see something happening. I am waiting on the computer to finish it's little jig. That is bad, and a violation of rule #2.

Further, from the original study itself:

"When a human being’s command was executed and returned an answer In under 400 milliseconds, it was deemed to exceed the Doherty threshold, and use of such applications were deemed to be “addicting” to users."

My answer has not been returned within 400ms, this the Doherty threshold has not been met.

I've only ever seen one unintrusive animation in UI, which was the window minimization animation of the Metacity window manager. It minimized the window immediately, but then followed up with an animated outline showing where the window had gone. It was thin enough that you could easily ignore it, but still provided all the benefit that designers claim from their slow and disruptive animations.

I hear you. I read this as: what if you can't meet the Doherty threshold? Do you try harder? More caching? Put a spinner on it? Animate? Try to tell some jokes?

Lies of UX web developers tell themselves, #1.

If git had a 400 ms animation I would be very upset.

If Amazon had a 400 ms animation for every purchase/page load I would be very upset.

If an art project had a 400 ms animation, that would be part of the art.

The big problem with this is that you expect the computer to respond to your clicks naturally and instantly and instead you are put on hold while an animation plays. It may not break the latency rule strictly, but theoretically feels like it should be added on there because it has the same effect for users who don't care about animations (aka most users).

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