A good rule is that showing progress or a stuck state appropriately at all stages takes precedence over other concerns in a progress bar.
So for a video upload from a photo app it's not at all unreasonable to make the first 50% the transcoding step and the second 50% the actual upload and show progress of each step within those percentages. Some people may read this with horror; the transcoding step might be much faster/slower! It's not accurate! But the point is the user can at least see progress/no progress. You aren't allowing an upload bar to sit at 0% because you prioritised a % accurate upload over a progress bar that represents all stages of progress. It's better the progress bar move faster/slower at various stages than a progress bar that simply misses stages.
This goes for loading screens that sit at 100% for a while too. I'd prefer if they reserved some percentage of the loading bar for those 'post 100%' steps and continued to show progress. End users won't care if it's not all the same speed as much as they'll care about stuck progress bars.
If you can cleanly segment the loading progress into multiple steps, you may as well render a label above the loading bar that says what it’s currently doing.
We're often limited to showing progress on a percentage bar UX wise for various reasons, particularly on mobile devices. I'd also give thought that each technical step may as well read something similar to 'reticulating splines' as far as an end user is concerned.
The time a user will read it is when the program stalls unexpectedly on a particular step. A support ticket or forum post which includes the step it stopped at will be easier to troubleshoot.
Comments
A good rule is that showing progress or a stuck state appropriately at all stages takes precedence over other concerns in a progress bar.
So for a video upload from a photo app it's not at all unreasonable to make the first 50% the transcoding step and the second 50% the actual upload and show progress of each step within those percentages. Some people may read this with horror; the transcoding step might be much faster/slower! It's not accurate! But the point is the user can at least see progress/no progress. You aren't allowing an upload bar to sit at 0% because you prioritised a % accurate upload over a progress bar that represents all stages of progress. It's better the progress bar move faster/slower at various stages than a progress bar that simply misses stages.
This goes for loading screens that sit at 100% for a while too. I'd prefer if they reserved some percentage of the loading bar for those 'post 100%' steps and continued to show progress. End users won't care if it's not all the same speed as much as they'll care about stuck progress bars.
If you can cleanly segment the loading progress into multiple steps, you may as well render a label above the loading bar that says what it’s currently doing.
We're often limited to showing progress on a percentage bar UX wise for various reasons, particularly on mobile devices. I'd also give thought that each technical step may as well read something similar to 'reticulating splines' as far as an end user is concerned.
The time a user will read it is when the program stalls unexpectedly on a particular step. A support ticket or forum post which includes the step it stopped at will be easier to troubleshoot.
Usually even technical terms are interesting since you have to wait anyway. Makes your imagination go.
Unfortunately it is much rarer nowadays and everything is hidden away.
Reticulating splines