How many people are bored at their desk for how many hours every day and how many days a week and how many weeks a year for how many years in their life?
Koliko se ljudi dosađuje za svojim stolom, koliko sati dnevno, koliko dana tjedno, koliko tjedana godišnje koliko godina u svom životu?
[Small thing. Big idea.]
[Mala stvar. Velika zamisao.]
[Daniel Engber on the Progress Bar]
[Daniel Engber o traci napretka]
The progress bar is just an indicator on a computer that something's happening inside the device. The classic one that's been used for years is a horizontal bar. I mean, this goes back to pre-computer versions of this on ledgers, where people would fill in a horizontal bar from left to right to show how much of a task they had completed at a factory. This is just the same thing on a screen.
Traka napretka na računalu samo nam daje do znanja da se nešto događa unutar uređaja. Klasična verzija koja se koristi već godinama je vodoravna traka. Pojavila se u raznim oblicima i prije samih računala kad su ljudi u poslovnim knjigama ispunjavali traku s lijeva nadesno kako bi prikazali količinu odrađenih zadataka u tvornici. Ovdje je riječ o istoj stvari samo na zaslonu
Something happened in the 70s that is sometimes referred to as "the software crisis," where suddenly, computers were getting more complicated more quickly than anyone had been prepared for, from a design perspective. People were using percent-done indicators in different ways. So you might have a graphical countdown clock, or they would have a line of asterisks that would fill out from left to right on a screen. But no one had done a systematic survey of these things and tried to figure out: How do they actually affect the user's experience of sitting at the computer?
U 70-ima se dogodilo nešto što se ponekad naziva "softverska kriza", vrijeme kad su računala odjednom postala sve kompliciranija puno brže nego je to itko očekivao iz dizajnerske perspektive. Ljudi su koristili indikatore napretka na različite načine. Koristili su se grafički prikazi sata za odbrojavanje ili linija zvjezdica koja bi ispunjavala zaslon s lijeva nadesno. Međutim, nije postojalo sustavno istraživanje o toj temi koje bi odgovorilo na pitanje: Kakav je uopće utjecaj takvih traka na korisničko iskustvo sjedenja za računalom?
This graduate student named Brad Myers, in 1985, decided he would study this. He found that it didn't really matter if the percent-done indicator was giving you the accurate percent done. What mattered was that it was there at all. Just seeing it there made people feel better, and that was the most surprising thing. He has all these ideas about what this thing could do. Maybe it could make people relax effectively. Maybe it would allow people to turn away from their machine and do something else of exactly the right duration. They would look and say, "Oh, the progress bar is half done. That took five minutes. So now I have five minutes to send this fax," or whatever people were doing in 1985. Both of those things are wrong. Like, when you see that progress bar, it sort of locks your attention in a tractor beam, and it turns the experience of waiting into this exciting narrative that you're seeing unfold in front of you: that somehow, this time you've spent waiting in frustration for the computer to do something, has been reconceptualized as: "Progress! Oh! Great stuff is happening!"
Upravo je zato postdiplomac Brad Myers 1985. godine odlučio napraviti svoje istraživanje. Saznao je da zapravo uopće nije važno prikazuje li nam traka točan postotak napretka. Važno je da se traka napretka uopće prikazuje. Ljude usrećuje već i sama činjenica da je tamo što je bilo najveće iznenađenje. Myers je imao pregršt ideja kako bismo je mogli koristiti. Možda bi ljudima mogla osigurati učinkovitije opuštanje. Možda bi ljudima mogla omogućiti da se nakratko odvoje od uređaja i rade nešto drugo što oduzima točno toliko vremena. Pogledali bi i zaključili: "Traka napretka je na pola puta. Trebalo joj je 5 minuta. To znači da sad imam 5 minuta za slanje onog faksa", ili čime god su se ljudi već bavili davne 1985. Obje ideje bile su pogrešne. Naime, kad vidite traku napretka, odmah vas u potpunosti zaokupira te iskustvo čekanja pretvori u uzbudljivu priču čiji rasplet gledate uživo ispred sebe. Vrijeme potrošeno na čekanje i frustraciju dok računalo radi svoj posao, pretvoreno je u nešto sasvim drugačije: "Napredak! Sjajne se stvari događaju!"
[Progress...]
[Napredak...]
But once you start thinking about the progress bar as something that's more about dulling the pain of waiting, well, then you can start fiddling around with the psychology.
Međutim, jednom kad počnete razmišljati o traci napretka kao o nečemu što služi za ublažavanje boli čekanja, možete se poigrati s psihologijom.
So if you have a progress bar that just moves at a constant rate -- let's say, that's really what's happening in the computer -- that will feel to people like it's slowing down. We get bored. Well, now you can start trying to enhance it and make it appear to move more quickly than it really is, make it move faster at the beginning, like a burst of speed. That's exciting, people feel like, "Oh! Something's really happening!" Then you can move back into a more naturalistic growth of the progress bar as you go along. You're assuming that people are focusing on the passage of time -- they're trying to watch grass grow, they're trying to watch a pot of water, waiting for it to boil, and you're just trying to make that less boring, less painful and less frustrating than it was before.
Ako primjerice imate traku napretka koja se kreće konstantnom brzinom, jer recimo odražava stvarni napredak računala, ljudi će imati osjećaj da usporava. Postat će nam dosadno. Sad je možete početi unapređivati i prikazati brži napredak nego što je to uistinu slučaj, pobrinuti se da krene brže na početku, kao da je dobila nalet energije. To je uzbudljivo i ljudi će pomisliti: "To! Nešto se uistinu događa!" Zatim se možete vratiti prirodnijem napretku trake kako prilazi kraju. Pretpostavljate da se ljudi koncentriraju na prolazak vremena, pokušavaju gledati travu kako raste, pokušavaju gledati lonac pun vode čekajući da proključa, i pokušavate cijeli proces učiniti što zanimljivijim, bezbolnijim i manje frustrirajućim nego što je bio ranije.
So the progress bar at least gives you the vision of a beginning and an end, and you're working towards a goal. I think in some ways, it mitigates the fear of death. Too much?
Traka napretka vam barem daje neku vrstu prikaza početka i kraja i dojam da napredujete prema cilju. Mislim da na neki način ublažava strah od smrti. Previše?