Preloaders allow us to manipulate “psychological time” managing to make the user perceive the waiting time as much shorter than it really is. Perceived time is subjective, and as we have reached the limit of optimizing our assets, it’s a big advantage to have creative solutions at our disposal to delight and entertain the user.
“Perceived performance” is a concept widely addressed in the psychology of Human-Computer Interaction, and shows us how to implement strategies that help us with the loading time problem. Users expect “instant feedback” within 0.2s of clicking a button, they should get that feedback in any form, a message, animation, sound, preloader, etc. We should also be able to give them some sort of reply to their request in no more than 2 seconds.
Loadings Loadings Loadings……
It’s often not possible to satisfy this need for immediacy and we have to respond with some sort of feedback that shows the state of the load, such as using preloaders or other techniques such as progressive loading images or video streaming, which allow the user to receive some information, even if only partially.
We can also go a step further and make the user wait in an active way, distracting them with a micro-game or asking them to carry out a task, such as fill in the details, with the excuse of personalizing the experience. This takes a few seconds of activity and the user is not conscious that a preloader is being generated.
In our Loading Animations Collection you can find an selection of interesting loading animations with animated typography, countdowns, simplified SVG vector graphics to create light animations. All these loading animations are devised to delight or surprise the user through their design and a touch of humor.
