UX Saftey Mechanisms to "Enhance" App Performance

From CIO.com:

Getting a Leg Up On Application Performance
"If one were to think of the performance management landscape as a three-legged stool, securing solid infrastructure is the first leg, managing applications to perform well and function properly is the second leg, and the third leg is managing the end user experience -- capturing metrics and monitoring the end user interaction with the application. The first two legs of the stool are critical to the success of any IT department deploying critical enterprise applications and most IT departments have these technologies installed. But while the third leg is equally important, it has not, historically, been given sufficient consideration in the discipline of application performance management."

IMHO, avoiding end user experience woes should be planned well ahead of implementation.

Let's face it, as user experience designers we should expect data to be slow. Factors out of our control such as too many people accessing information, equipment failures, or someone deciding to reboot a server during the middle of the day, will make our beautifully designed applications sppear sluggish. This frustrates our audience and has the potential to lower the value of our client's brands.

To rescue these bad experiences, UX Safety Mechanisms must be pre-planned during the initial phases of development.

A UX Safety Mechanism is a visual screen action that helps the application "act" like it's performing optimally. This comes in two forms:

1. Visual Diversion. Part of the UX designer's responsibility is to respect the end-user's time. That means providing some sort of visual diversion, even if it seems to offer little value. Say a server is acting slow, would you let the application sit there with a spinning beachball or hourglass? I didn't think so, but many designers do because technically it's "not their fault." An better approach is to make the application feel like it is doing something. For example, if a screen transition does some extended animated movement to mask the server delay, the user may believe this is a necessary action of the UI, and not think much of it. People will wait for a screen to change if there is some nice visual effect, or if there is a humorous messages – so long as it doesn't keep repeating itself.
   
   
2. Dynamic Population. Probably the best approach, this UX Saftey Mechanism occurs when an application is populating content into the UI as it's gathering it. Kayak.com is a good example of this. Even though all the data is not pulled in yet, the user can start sorting through partial information immediately. Even if the server is super slow, it still offers a perception that the application's response is speedy. If people can see incremental progress, they will be forgiving when things are moving like a snail.
   

Of course, one could combine both mechanisms for added benefit to the user. It just depends how much time is budgeted into the project for these line items.

UX Safety Mechanisms are a couple simple methods to enhance a user's experience with the technology snafus we must inherently deal with. This ensures our audience's perception of the application's brand is kept in high regard.