Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Speed is in the Eye of the Beholder

The average person spends at least an hour a day waiting in line. Whether that be in a queue of cars on the way to work, or upon trying to enter any building (it's hard to crowd everyone through the front door all at once), or in any of the more conscious situations of waiting in line at the post office, ticket counter, subway station, supermarket, and so forth. I don't think that anyone likes to suffer the frustration of waiting. Thus we often try to find ways to reduce our frustration by acquiring processes that deliver higher performance.

Often times, the perception of waiting less is just as effective as the actual fact of waiting less. For instance, an owner of a Porsche achieves the thrill of directness between translation of a slight tap on the acceleration pedal, to be manifest as an immediate burst of speed. Yet in any normal rush hour situation, a Porsche doesn't go any faster than a Hyundai. The Porsche owner, however, still derives pleasure from his or her perception that they are getting to work faster in a quantitatively faster machine. The visual and tactile semantics of the Porsche's cockpit all support the qualitative illusion that the driver is going faster than when he or she is sitting inside a Hyundai. We can say the same thing for computer case designs.

The voluptuous G3 and G4 desktop computers by Apple bore a kind of visual slippery-ness that pervaded their graphical user-interface dubbed "Aqua." With windows swooshing about like a magic genie, and with icons popping their heads all over the place like a broken game of Whack-A-Mole, you are introduced to a magical space of a perceived faster and better computer. Only thing is that Apple has gotten it completely wrong with their over-graphicized interfaces. Try running an older version of the Macintosh operating system on one of the newer computers and you can see real speed because less processor power is being used to theatricize a visual cast of too many overpaid extras.

There was a similar happening in things that were non-computer beginning around the 1930s by a designer named Raymond Loewy. You may not know his name, but you probably know the Coca-Cola bottle that he designed many years ago (I refer to the slim and classic single-serve glass one, and not the over-bulbous one-liter plastic container). Loewy is known for being influenced by the aesthetics of flight and jet propulsion and transferring the "style" (not function) of flight onto regular household objects. For instance a vacuum cleaner could be made to look more swift and light by giving it visual characteristics of an airplane. A car could be made to look faster by attaching fins on the back that do nothing for the car aerodynamically. Streamlining still lives today, but in a more subtle way such as in my example of the G3/G4 desktop computer. However a lack of self-control in designs of user interfaces is vastly eroding any hope that computers might become satisfying and usable again. Thus our agenda of simplicity here at MIT.

I looked all over the web but could not find the reference. I am certain someone will point it out** for me. I am thinking of a research paper by Apple Advanced Technology Group back when Apple used to invest in research in a big way. The premise was when a user was presented with a task that required time for the computer to crunch on something, when a progress bar was shown, the user would perceive that the computer took less time to process versus having been shown no progress bar at all.

Let's do an experiment, shall we? Below on the left I have a progress bar that elapses for about 3 seconds. On the right, the progress bar carries the same time lapse, but this time with an animation of the progress of time. Click on the individual image to isolate it within the browser.

   
What did you find? I certainly was convinced! Less time is felt to elapse in the progress bar on the right. On the left, time messily plops out like ketchup from a bottle of Heinz; on the right, time is gently spread across a slice of bread with a butter knife.

Such a simple idea, executed with such little graphics power. Old school magic—who needs flash when you've got substance?

Media Lab SIMPLICITY researcher Kelly Norton provided the interesting comment: "A friend of mine who used to do something with design and layout of retail spaces told me that elevator doors are typically a nice mirror finish because a study had once shown how they produce a significant decrease in perceived wait time. Apparently, we are a content species so long as we can stare at ourselves."

Nick Douglas in Pennsylvania writes, "Waiting on hold on a phone, the archetypal patience-tester, passes faster when classical music is played—but only for men. Women perceive more time as passing with classical music: link."

**Thanks to Martin Gomez for finding the closest link. I happen to remember an older paper but cannot find it.

Posted by maeda at January 25, 2005 08:37 PM