Ever visit a site to find that loading the content takes forever?

Or worse, you clicked on the submit button, expecting to be greeted by a loading spinner and a new page, instead you see the same page and nothing happens. After a few seconds, the page suddenly changes without warning.

This feeling of frustration is what we are looking into today.

In this article I want to introduce to you the UX-effect known as Doherty's Threshold.

Take-Aways

• Keep the response time of your application to around 400ms - this will keep people engaged with the task
• Use loading spinners and progress-bars to keep people engaged when waiting times have to be longer

What is Doherty's Threshold?

It was named after IBM Researcher Walter J. Doherty who discovered that when the response time of the system was quicker, the overall efficiency of the process improved.

This means a person does not have to wait for a response but receives the cues for the next step toward completing the task.

People are not waiting for the system to respond, but can smoothly transition to the next step, keeping their train-of- thought.

Increasing the response time will not only cause frustration, if no visual feedback in the form of loading spinners or progress bars are presented but will most likely result in rage-clicking.

Not good.

Which is why you should always include some form one indication that work is being in the background - one of the most important Usability Heuristics outlined by Jakob Nielsen.

That way the person is receiving visual feedback in response to their action.

This makes the person feel more at ease and builds trust in your product.

The ideal response time of a system has been measured at around 400ms.

Keeping the response time at this level allows the person using the system to flow between steps and efficiently achieve the task they set out to complete.

Conclusion

This effect demonstrates well how important it is to give the person using your product feedback in response to their action. Particularly, when this action will require longer loading times.

This will simply allow them to know that everything is working and that currently the system is loading.

Comment down below your most frustrating user-experience you have had.