The front end anatomy of the progress bar
The progress bar is an indication of time to completion. It gives the end user the ability to make specific decisions for the task at hand. These could be:
- A visual representation of time to completion for a specific task.
- The delta or slope between progress in order to reach completion of a task.
- Speed in relation to time of completion for when a task will reach 100%
From the above attributes, the user is able to understand the complexity of the system and or quality of programming for when a task is set to complete. General users may look at progress bars as a simple indication of what to expect will come next, how long it will take and how to plan along side the progress to completion with other related tasks. Progress bars come in many shapes and forms, but the ultimate objective is letting the user know that backend work is being done they cannot see by showing a visual representation of how long to wait. Some bars simply show % to completion, while others may present key notifications during the process such as “initialization” “buffering” “connecting” etc.
Progress bars are useful for simple scenarios but in complex engineering they can be more dynamic. As with anything, there is always the endeavor to make what is good better either with improvements, add-ons or simplifications. The acclimation of AI may even be integrated into progress bar notifications if the rule sets understand reasons for the averages in % attainment and why such progress notifications are needed. AI could even possibly support delays and improve progress if it were to understand user frustrations during loading and improve hold times by reevaluating to improve completion.
Whatever the use case may be, a simple feature such as a progress bar is important to let people and engineers know the system is working, thus to hang tight. More complex progress bars may even link the stage of completion to a more detailed check list. Ultimately, the basic progress bar we all look at when installing or update software or our phones seems a bit conventional—although it works, improvements may be useful.
As with any product, the use case for an intended progress bar is important. Given systems run various checks and balances, things such as internet speed, system specs, programming quality, compression, decompression, settings attributes, disk read/write speed affect progress bar reporting. In scenarios that require multiple amounts of files to be transferred a simple progress bar may not suffice. Overall, although useful, it’s good to take a look at existing and working progress bar types and identify improvements.