Response Times: The Three Important Limits

Was just reading some articles on useit.com, when i came across one about response times, which is quite interesting.
Anyway, it’s also funny when you see how only a few people consider response times when they’re developping stuff these days.

Here are the 3 important response time limits:

– 0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.

– 1.0 second is about the limit for the user’s flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.

– 10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the user’s attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect.

So, how’re you doing on those 3 limits ? lol…

You can read more here.