How the progress bar keeps you sane | Small Thing Big Idea, a TED series

The progress bar makes waiting more exciting… and mitigates our fear of death. Journalist Daniel Engber explores how it came into existence.

Small Thing Big Idea, a TED original series, celebrates the lasting genius of everyday objects so perfectly designed that they changed the world around them. Check out more here:

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29 Comments on How the progress bar keeps you sane | Small Thing Big Idea, a TED series

  1. How bout make em so that when the bar reaches the end IT ACTUALLY DPES SOMTHING AND DOESN’T SIT THERE FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR…that makes me insane

  2. If I tried downloading rainbow 6 siege without a progress bar I would go insane, loading GTA V makes me go insane because there is not a progress bar.

  3. There is nothing worse than progress bars that LIE. The worst offender I have ever seen is when the Windows file explorer shows a green progress bar in the address bar when connecting to network drives. I swear to God it is actually programmed to approach the other end asymptotically. So if your drive never connects, it will just get ever and ever closer to being “done” without ever reaching the other end until a time-out like 10 minutes later.

  4. I once wrote a “Tetris progress bar.” The task was so slow that I gave the operator a chance to have a game of Tetris that paused once the task was finished. Oh, how I miss the days of being salaried.

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