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["frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx" <frederik.nnaji@xxxxxxxxx>]

Progress Indication

A lot of designs indicate progress through status bars, numerical
information, progress windows (modal) or [Details] subviews.

Progress of an operation is best suited immediately on the involved object
itself or very close to it, so the user's eye can easily keep both the
object and its status in focus simultaneously.
An object, its representation (icon, thumb, preview, full view, scaled view,
"tilted view", sample..) and metainformation including its status are all
mental objects the user sees in relationship, so morphing one into the other
or displaying them in close proximity are useful practise.
Displaying progress information about an object which is in my focus far
away from this visual focal point is against the nature of things, even
though it might make a programming solution easier to achieve on the short
run.
On the long run i'm just adding to complexity and dissipation in my software
project, if i seperate what belongs united.

An "object" in this sense could be content, which is being downloaded, a
procedure which is being completed.
In any case, "object" is the (visual) representation of the one very entity
which is "progressing".

I attached a negative example, showing how it shouldn't be done, with
annotations.
I couldn't say exactly what a Race Condition is, but i think if i'm not
completely mistaken, the term fairly describes a part of the problem
illustrated in the attached screenshot.
These are the kind of things that happen if you seperate context information
(metadata, progress information, related objects) visually or conceptually
from its parent object.
The parent object in this case being always the one object the user is
obviously currently focusing on.
e.g.:
If enter a folder, naturally it is correct to assume that this is my pwd, my
currently focused "Place" or object.
Showing all information related to the folder right there where i'm looking
at it is the logical next step in design.

Natural
Progress indication is natural, once it reflects the true status of an
object as comprehensively as all the available status information allows.
If i e.g. know that a file has been downloaded by 27% already, the file's
representation, be it a thumbnail, should be e.g. partially saturated by 27%
or an appropriate rastered value close to that.
It doesn't make much sense to present an object, which is incomplete, as if
it were complete. Download routines in browsers e.g. sometimes use .part
files to indicate that a file has not finished downloading.
With today's possibilities in compositing and animated graphics, none of
this must happen, we can manipulate the visual representations of objects
directly, no need to give the user wrong information.
Information is wrong, if it is not in sync with what is fact. If a visual
object reflects wrongly the status or properties of its "real live" entity,
this leads to something like a Race condition situation, in which the user
might initiate an interaction that at the time is not appropriate for the
respective object.

Especially John Lea's concepts in the Unity Gesture UI Guidelines (draft)¹
are a great indication for the fact that we need to think about these things
more now, since the haptic interface is gaining importance and relevance.
Mobile computers are adapting touch-HIDs as a de-facto standard, home
computer systems are in consequence becoming gestural, to better match the
usage patterns learnt on the omnipresent mobile devices.

I think the concept behind what i am trying to convey is as simple as can
be, it is actually about keeping things natural and simple.
If this mail is blurry or unclear in any way, please help me by asking or
pointing out stuff!

thanks ;)

opinions? thoughts?

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