I think the psychology behind making progress bars is quite simple.

Progress bar is the fun, stepping-away coding when you are tired of the important coding. When the progress bar itself would get serious, the fun factor vanishes and you get tired of that too and get back to important coding. And you never get back because it's just a fuckin progress bar and you have a deadline anyway.

I think the psychology behind making progress bars is quite simple.

Progress bar is the fun, stepping-away coding when you are tired of the important coding. When the progress bar itself would get serious, the fun factor vanishes and you get tired of that too and get back to important coding. And you never get back because it's just a fuckin progress bar and you have a deadline anyway.

hahahaha :)

Obligatory XKCD:

I just wonder about the design process there.

"Let's put a progress bar!"

"Why?"

"Uh..... Shiny?"

I think "Uh... Shiny" explains a lot of modern UI elements. I can't think of much practical use for this other than "Ooohhhhh".

Ah, how about to remind the user that their system hasn't completely locked up, and that 'stuff' is still happening and they should be waiting, and NOT hammering on the device and looking for the reset button?

That circling thing is very popular now, you can see it in all sort of apps and OSes. Wonder why it stuck up so much.

Though it makes feel like things are progressing doesn't it?

I've been watching this for 20 minutes... when is it going to do something?

Just keep waiting, it will stop eventually and helpfully inform you that an error occurred.

Sure. But a lot of the time when stuff freezes, or the window becomes unresponsive, those UI elements keep ticking away.

Indeed, more often than not when I see that thing it means the process has locked up x_x; It's there just for placebo effect.