Progress bars on computers manage users’ expectations of waiting, according to work by Brad Myers.
“This is true on our computers and it’s true that at lines at Disneyland. You look at it tells you how long it’s going to take and you set an expectation,” explains BKC Faculty Associate Jason Farman, “And when you get to the front of the line faster than you thought you were going to (or when that particular piece of software loads faster than you thought it was going to), you leave the encounter feeling positive.”