The Effects Of Anchoring Information And Loading Animation In Progress Bars On Waiting Time Perception And Satisfactio

Time is a precious resource for users,and the issue of web waiting has received increasing attention.It has been shown that providing progress bars during the waiting process can rationalize the waiting process and improve user satisfaction.However,most of the previous studies only focus on exploring the progress bar itself,lacking a richer perspective.Therefore,this study combines progress bars with anchoring effect theory and attentional gate theory to explore the effects of progress bars on users’ waiting process under the setting of different combinations of designs.The purpose of this study is to explore the best user experience in waiting,and investigate the effect of adding anchoring information and loading animation to the progress bar on the user’s perception of waiting time and satisfaction.This study was conducted through 4 within-subject experiments,Experiment 1and Experiment 2 were based on anchoring effects,examining the effect of anchoring information added to the progress bar on subjects’ perceptions of waiting time and satisfaction,the independent variables in Experiment 1 were loading time(5 s,10 s)and numerical anchoring type(low anchor,high anchor),the independent variables in Experiment 2 were loading time(5 s,10 s)and physical anchoring type(short anchor,long anchor),and the dependent variables were both waiting time estimation and satisfaction assessment.Experiments 3 and 4 were based on attentional gate theory and explored the effects of loading animations in the progress bar on subjects’ perceptions of waiting time,satisfaction,and user preferences.The independent variables for Experiment 3 were loading time(5 s,10 s)and animation relevance(no animation,irrelevant animation,relevant animation),and for Experiment 4,the independent variables were loading time(5 s,10 s)and animation type(no animation,rotating animation,vivid animation).The dependent variables were all waiting time estimation,satisfaction assessment,and preference selection.The results showed that the subjects’ time perception was significantly lower in the low and short anchor conditions than in the high and long anchor conditions,and that the low anchor condition performed better in terms of satisfaction.The vivid animation outperformed the rotating animation in terms of both time perception and satisfaction,while animations related to the nature of the website significantly increased the subjects’ satisfaction.Based on the results of the experiments,the following conclusions were drawn: adding low anchor information to the progress bar can make users feel that the time passes faster and that they are more satisfied with the waiting process;Adding vivid animation and relevance animation to the progress bar will significantly improve users’ satisfaction when waiting,and these two types of animations are favored by users,while rotating animation will aggravate users’ attention to time and should be avoided in the waiting scenario.The significance of this study is that it enriches the results related to progress bar research and provides practical implications for future loading interface design.In addition,this study reveals the role of time-filler in user waiting,which has enlightening implications for optimizing user web waiting experience and building website brand image.