Surprisingly: Many applications intentionally run slowly to keep users waiting

Undeniably, technology is growing rapidly in every way: increasingly powerful hardware to solve tougher problems, perform every task more quickly; The software is also optimized every day so that it is faster and less error prone. Gone are the days when everything was done slowly, annoying users.

But do you believe that application developers are intentionally slowing down their products? Why do they do that, isn’t everything done as quickly as possible?

When learning about TurboTax – an application that helps users calculate and declare tax, analysts find that every time users enter data, the application will display a standby screen to indicate the server is calculating. maths. However, no matter how the user enters the data, this standby screen is identical, essentially just a ‘dead’ screen, displaying a graphic, not showing anything. .

Facebook has done the same with its account security app, forcing users to wait a few seconds before completing their requests. Facebook’s server is really powerful, user requests are only in milliseconds, but why do they make users wait longer?

The answer may seem ridiculous, but … extremely plausible: people don’t want to wait too long, but they don’t want everything to be done too quickly! Take a simple example: when you go into a high-class store and order expensive food, you expect that food dish will be prepared and processed meticulously to have the best quality .

But if after only 30 seconds you called and the waiter brought out a plate of food, you would immediately be skeptical of its quality. Are these dishes made in advance, and when you order them, they just reheat them in the microwave and serve them right away, not the first time?

People associate wait with quality, with ‘worth the wait’. Conversely, things that are done too quickly and easily will be perceived as cheap, unworthy, and unreliable. Many applications can execute user requests in a snap, but force us to wait a bit to see if the results of that application are valuable, reliable, and worth using.

The researchers call this “Labor Illusion” rough translation is “The illusion of labor” – increasing the working time of the application (or as well as the waiting time of a user) to make it ‘valid’ than in the eyes of the user. The question is whether this trick will benefit the user or not? For users, they will also have a better experience, whereas they will spend valuable time can be used to do other things.