Si le site ou l’appli que vous consultez vous donne une réponse trop vite, vous doutez de sa véracité. La solution : allonger artificiellement le délai de réponse.

Facebook actually slows down its interface to make users feel safe, a Facebook spokesperson confirmed in an email. « While our systems perform these checks at a much faster speed than people can actually see, it’s important that they understand what we do behind the scenes to protect their Facebook account, » the spokesperson wrote. « UX can be a powerful education tool and walking people through this process at a slower speed allows us to provide a better explanation and an opportunity for people to review and understand each step along the way. »

So companies introduce what Kowitz calls an « artificial waiting » pattern into their interfaces. These are status bars, maybe a few update messages, to construct a facade of slow, hard, thoughtful work, even though the computer is done calculating your query.

Kowitz says he has only used artificial waiting a few times in the design sprints he runs through Google Ventures, and only when instantaneous results weren’t working. In one case, he was working on a loan approval app. The back end was atypically fast. It could get someone a true lender-backed mortgage instantly. But when the app makers put that experience in the hands of consumers, people responded in disbelief. « When they saw it, they were like, ‘I’m pre-approved but not really approved,’ » he says. So the designers added a progress bar that said it was checking credit, and suddenly, the same system seemed trustworthy.