Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Progress bar showing no progression



When uploading a file using zShare, you get a progress bar that shows you that the 'uploading' is in progress. The progress bar used by zShare is represented by orange rectangles that constantly go left to right. This approach makes the point of the progress bar useless. What does it tell me ? Well its telling me there is something going on which is good. However, there is no details on how long it will take. I believe this is essential information especially for a uploading site. If i had a file that was 4mb, and I knew it was going to take 1hour to upload I would not waste my time. It is this sort of information that is useful for the user. Also, what is useful for the user is the way the progress bar is presented. Rather than having a constantly moving rectangles, a bar that starts off small and moves towards the right as the item is uploaded to show progression would be more informative for the user. This would give an indication to the user as to how long it will take and when it is nearly done. Thus giving them an idea if its worth waiting or not.

3 comments:

Mehdi said...

the point is just to keep people busy...

Shean said...

... tell me about it... i was sitting here looking thinking erm.. wonder how long this is going to take... closed all programs that would take up bandwidth to see if that had any effect on the speed. But still no useful feedback. Eventually I thought this is taking too long im just going to close it. For all I know it could have nearly been finished.

«¤°K®£Å°¤» said...

:stalking:
hey, seems they heard your advice, cuz I just entered to that site and tried to check around... I uploaded a test file and they added a Percent Complete info. I guess now people will get and idea of how long the upload will take.