How the progress bar keeps you sane | Small Thing Big Idea, a TED series

I think I’m the only person who found this video looking for a video with a thumbnail with a fake progress bar at the bottom /:

There is a real truth behind progress bars. Check my video

bullshit thing <3 thanks

I bet the progress bar wasted a lot of precious time for a lot of persons who would have been better off with a message like : “Hey this installation on your pc will take about 10 minutes. Please check after that if it’s still not done something is wrong”

Woman are like progress bar to men

That circular loading makes me insane

They should show a little story instead - like a little person running to a destination or the like.

I REALLY miss defragmenting hard drives. All those little boxes flooding by as they change colors and making my data safe and speedy. Definitely therapeutic.

No Korean here? bruh?

I thought it was about "it's okay, what matters the most is your life makes progress, even if it's slow". But apparently the video just said the function of progress bar 🤣

Interesting...

Very helpful , thank you.

It's awful that this presenter is convinced that such manipulations are helpful.

How's about if tech gave users a non-skewed version of reality, and then let us worry about the psychological state resultant of it.

It'd be nice if I could actually estimate the amount of my time such "progress" will consume. Sheesh. Even the word is a euphemism for after-the-fact repair.

PS4 updates for Fortnite takes a while too 😟

Safari always likes to freeze until I refresh the page and loads 100 times better than waiting for a frozen page to load

Safari always likes to freeze until I refresh the page and loads 100 times better than waiting for a frozen page to load

When its 99% and crashes makes me go insane.

I was told by a Sony audio equipment rep., they had to put a green light on the front of their pre - amps. Customers couldn't stand not knowing if the unit was on or not.

I still hate them

As if I hadn't spent enough time watching progress bars, I now find myself watching videos about progress bars. Go figure!

no, wasn't too much. It was an amazing quote.

too much 😂

😊😊😊

Safari's progress bar is pretty accurate, isn't it?

The idea of a progress bar not being an accurate representation of progress made or time remaining but instead being repurposed as some kind of tool for psychological manipulation or entertainment is infuriating. ... But it also explains a lot.

Did I really watch this to the end. Could have got away with watching a progress bar instead

sorry but I think your wrong I have been using pc's for 3 decades and its more to show that your pc is just actually doing something and not froze and you need to restart because as long as its moving your not waiting in vein

To me it's just an indicator that my computer is doing something. If the bar doesn't pop up then I know it didn't initiate the command. I don't dealt care how long it takes I just don't want to be sitting around forever wondering if the task had been done.

My life is a lie. Thanks.

The progress bar is there to say "The computer hasn't frozen or crashed. You should still wait for it rather than force-quitting the application."

This is the reason why I use "rsync --info=progress2" instead of plain "cp". It's really frustating to copy GBs of files and not knowing whether it's near ending or not

Me: I'm going to sleep early tonight
Me at 2:32am: * watching a video about how progress bars keep me sane *

The worst kind is where the progress bar finishes and then goes back to zero and starts again...multiple times.

I'd prefer a progress bar that's giving me accurate information over one that's "telling me an interesting story" all day!

Ummm... The progress bar not being accurate drives me insane sometimes.. Especially after it has repeated 500x.

progress bar = illegal downloading hollywood new realese movies

import tqdm as tqdm

I always felt that the way people feel about progress bars or loading symbols was linked to the human need to quantify progression. When we do something or wait for something with no discernable change we become uneasy. When there is something that tells us that there is a change and that there is a definite goal to this change that will be reached (either by letting time pass or by doing certain things) humans can focus better on the task. Think of it as a game. Say you have two of the exact same RPG. In the first RPG (let's call it RPGA) you have the conventional quantification of status and skills, in the second game (this one called RPGB) all that quantification happens still, but you give the players no indication aside from when they achieve a goal or attain a skill (no experience bars, no mana gauges, no hp bar, no status numbers to quantify their strengths and weaknesses but they still have them). If you were to play the traditional game, you are able to focus on raising certain things quite easily. When you do an action the game indicates through numbers that there is a discernable effect from your actions (i.e. gaining exp, raising skill exp, progress towards a quest). Now in game RPGB, you don't have any indicators. You get the exp still, but you don't know how much. You can raise all those skills in the same manner but you don't know how long you'll have to keep going to get it to level up. The person playing would no longer have confidence that what they are doing is making a difference in a direction that they want things to progress towards, or even if there is any progress at all. How long do I have to do something to raise this now? This difference in knowledge changes the experience completely. When you are presented with data that indicates that what you are doing effects something, even if that means just waiting for a set amount of time to get something done, you are confident that there is change happening. When you don't have any indication that something is happening, even if you know it should be, you feel concerned that maybe it's not doing what it should be doing.

At least that's my take on the progress bar.

F@ck progress bars these days ... the bar completes and then they start it again ...

LOADING 265%... KEEP ON WAITING. IT'LL FINISH, WE PROMISE ;)

Especially Steam download progress bars

I hate it when the progress bar goes really fast and then just stops!

That's why the same way it's satisfactory to see the progression, it's very frustrating to see when it reaches 101%. It's all about expectation alignment and trust!

I watched red dead redemption install for 4 hours

waiting for gta5 to load... most frustrating thing ever

Lol so weird yet so true😂

In many cases the progress bar doesn’t mean much.. so often on PC (especially) and sometimes Mac systems, the progress bar will take its longest when it hits 100%!! I usually ignore them and go for a coffee!

On a deeper level, we are all Born with a virtual Progress bar that has no numbers, could fill up anytime then its all over :)