This design guide was created for Windows 7 and has not been updated for newer versions of Windows. Much of the guidance still applies in principle, but the presentation and examples do not reflect our current design guidance.
With a progress bar, users can follow the progress of a lengthy operation. A progress bar may either show an approximate percentage of completion (determinate), or indicate that an operation is ongoing (indeterminate).
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Usability studies have shown that users are aware of response times of over one second. Consequently, you should consider operations that take two seconds or longer to complete to be lengthy and in need of some type of progress feedback.
Will the operation complete in about five seconds or less? If so, use an activity indicator instead, because displaying a progress bar for such a short duration would be distracting. If the operation usually takes five seconds or less but sometimes takes more, start with a busy pointer and convert to a progress bar after five seconds.
Is an indeterminate progress bar combined with an animation? If so, use just the animation instead. The indeterminate progress bar is effectively a generic animation and adds no value to the animation.
Is the operation a very lengthy (longer than two minutes) background task for which users are more interested in completion than progress? If so, use a notifications instead. In this case, users do other tasks in the meantime and are not monitoring the progress. Using a notification allows users to perform other tasks without disruption. Examples of such lengthy operations include printing, backup, system scans, and bulk data transfers or conversions.
Use determinate progress bars for operations that require a bounded amount of time, even if that amount of time cannot be accurately predicted. Indeterminate progress bars show that progress is being made, but provide no other information. Don't choose an indeterminate progress bar based only on the possible lack of accuracy alone.
For example, suppose an operation requires five steps and each of those steps requires a bounded amount of time, but the amount of time for each step can vary greatly. In this case, use a determinate progress bar and show progress when each step completes proportional to the amount of time each step usually takes. Use an indeterminate progress bar only if a determinate progress bar would cause users to conclude incorrectly that the operation has locked up.
Clearly indicate real progress. The progress bar must advance if progress is being made. If the range of expected completion times is large, consider using a non-linear scale to indicate progress for the longer times. You don't want users to conclude that your program has locked up when it hasn't.
Clearly indicate lack of progress. The progress bar must not advance if no progress is being made. You don't want users to wait indefinitely for an operation that is never going to complete.
Provide useful progress details. Provide additional progress information, but only if users can do something with it. Make sure the text is displayed long enough for users to be able to read it.
Don't provide unnecessary details. Generally users don't care about the details of the operation being performed. For example, users of a setup program don't care about the specific file being copied or that system components are being registered because they have no expectations about these details. Typically, a well-labeled progress bar alone provides sufficient information, so provide additional progress information only if users can do something with it. Providing details that users don't care about makes the user experience overly complicated and technical. If you need more detailed information for debugging, don't display it in release builds.
Provide useful animations. If done well, animations improve the user experience by helping users visualize the operation. Good animations have more impact than text alone. For example, the progress bar for the Outlook Delete command displays the Recycle Bin for the destination if the files can be recovered, but no Recycle Bin if the files can't be recovered.
Don't use unnecessary animations. Animations can be misleading because they usually run in a separate thread from the actual task and therefore can suggest progress even if the operation has locked up. Also, if the operation is slower than expected, users sometimes assume that the animation is part of the reason. Consequently, only use animations when there is a clear justification; don't use them to try to entertain users.
Position animations centered over the progress bar. Put the animation above the progress bar labels, if you have any. If there is a Cancel or Stop button to the right of the progress bar, include the button when determining the center.
Play a sound effect at the completion of an operation only if it is very lengthy (longer than two minutes), infrequent, and important. If the user is likely to walk away from an important operation while it is processing, a sound effect restores the user's attention. Using a sound effect upon completion in other circumstances would be a distracting annoyance.
Don't steal input focus to show a progress update or completion. Users often switch to other programs while waiting and don't want to be interrupted. Background tasks must stay in the background.
Don't worry about technical support. Because the feedback provided by progress bars isn't necessarily accurate and is fleeting, progress bars aren't a good mechanism for providing information for technical support. Consequently, if the operation can fail (as with a setup program), don't provide additional progress information that is only useful to technical support. Instead, provide an alternative mechanism such as a log file to record technical support information.
Clearly indicate the progress phase. The progress bar must be able to indicate if the operation is in the beginning, middle, or end of an operation. For example, progress bars that immediately shoot to 99 percent completion, then stay there for a long time are particularly uninformative and annoying. In these cases, the progress bar should be set initially to at most 33 percent to indicate that the operation is still in the beginning phase.
Provide a time remaining estimate if you can do so accurately. Time remaining estimates that are accurate are useful, but estimates that are way off the mark or bounce around significantly aren't helpful. You may need to perform some processing before you can give accurate estimates. If so, don't display potentially inaccurate estimates during this initial period.
Don't restart progress. A progress bar loses its value if it restarts (perhaps because a step in the operation completes) because users have no way of knowing when the operation will complete. Instead, have all the steps in the operation share a portion of the progress and have the progress bar go to completion once.
Don't back up progress. As with a restart, a progress bar loses its value if it backs up. Always increase progress monotonically. However, you can have a time remaining estimate that increases (as well as decreases) because the rate of progress may vary.
Use indeterminate progress bars only for operations whose overall progress cannot be determined. Use indeterminate progress bars for operations that require an unbounded amount of time or that access an unknown number of objects. Use timeouts to give bounds to time-based operations.
Convert to a determinate progress bar once the overall progress can be determined. For example, if it takes significantly longer than two seconds to determine the number of objects, you can use an indeterminate progress bar while the objects are counted, and then convert to a determinate progress bar.
If users can do something productive while the operation is in progress, provide modeless feedback. You might need to disable a subset of functionality that requires the operation to complete.
Provide a command button to halt the operation if it takes more than a few seconds to complete, or has the potential never to complete. Label the button Cancel if canceling returns the environment to its previous state (leaving no side effects), otherwise label the button Stop to indicate that it leaves the partially completed operation intact. You can change the button label from Cancel to Stop in the middle of the operation if at some point it isn't possible to return the environment to its previous state. Center the command button vertically with the progress bar instead of aligning their tops.
Use the following time formats. Start with the first of the following formats where the largest time unit isn't zero, and then change to the next format once the largest time unit becomes zero.
Focus on the time remaining because that is the information users care about most. Give total elapsed time only when there are scenarios where elapsed time is helpful (such as when the task is likely to be repeated). If the time remaining estimate is associated with a progress bar, don't have percent complete text because that information is conveyed by the progress bar itself.
Use a concise label with a static text control to indicate what the operation is doing. Start the label with a verb (for example, Copying) and end with an ellipsis. This label may change dynamically if the operation has multiple steps or is processing multiple objects. 152ee80cbc
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