The Science of Waiting

Assuming you’re not reading this on your iPhone 12s in some far more web-optimized future, it probably took this page between two and three seconds to show up. That’s … not bad. Sure, the range could be higher or lower depending on your browser, your location, the network you’re using, the time of day, your device, and all sorts of other variables. But two-to-three seconds is a good baseline for August 2016.

How long it seemed to take is an entirely different matter. Even with increasingly faster devices, speedier networks, and optimized web code, waiting is inevitable—and legitimately stressful. The good news: It’s also relatively easy to manage the perception of that waiting, and web designers are getting better and better at it.

“Our sense of time is surprisingly easy to manipulate,” says Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman, “whether it’s actual duration or the order in which things happen.” Your emotional state, immediate environment, the music playing in the background, cultural biases—all of these can affect whether a download that is fast actually feels fast.
Read more at Wired.com.