Extending patience with regular progress updates
It's a widely held misperception that people are impatient. In reality, people just want to be reassured that progress is being made. As long as they perceive that to be the case, it is possible to keep them waiting indefinately with little to no ill-effect.
One approximation of regular progress updates is the deadline. It is true that people are much more conducive to long waits if they are given a completion date. However, I posit that this is because they subconsciously translate such a deadline into a sequence of stages that can be treated like progress markers. But you can usually avoid guaranteeing a completion date entirely by simply providing progress updates at a sufficiently high frequency. Furthermore, people will be more receptive to this approach. Now, there are certain conditions under which a deadline is required, such as when people are faced with an externally imposed deadline for a task that depends upon the one you are performing for them, but in those cases people are generally amenable to having their request turned down entirely, as long as this is done up front before they waste time waiting for the completion of a task that may not be done in time. The caveat, therefore, is that the approach described herein applies only when people are waiting for something that they want, rather than something they need within a specific timeframe.
Here are my hypotheses as to why this approach works. For starters, the primary reason people become impatient is usually boredom; they are far less likely to grow impatient when distracted by something. This is why, for instance, waiting rooms stock magazines for people to read while they wait. Another contributing factor to impatience is frustration at a lack of control over the process. Providing regular and frequent progress reports goes a long way toward alleviating that because it gives people a very convincing illusion of being in charge, especially if you provide them with some rudimentary control, such as allowing them to opt out of the process at each stage and providing them with opportunities to specify particulars about how they want some subtasks performed. Note that these details should always be optional as the people ought to have been asked to specify them at the beginning, since they should never be expected to pay attention to any of the status updates along the way. Finally, people frequently grow upset while waiting due to the perception that they are being ignored or that nothing is being done to help them. Again, providing progress reports stifles that quite effectively.
The level of granularity with which progress updates should be provided depends principally upon the length of the task in concern. Unsurprisingly, longer tasks merit more granular updates. But length should be measured relative to the time people will normally expect the task to require, since impatience tends to balloon after a task has exceeded the duration that people initially expected it to take. A good rule of thumb would be to increase update granularity as the progress falls behind typical or initial estimates. Doing the converse (reducing granularity when progress turns out to be significantly quicker than usual/estimated) may be a good idea as well. Of course, dynamic changes in update granularity should be accompanied by an indication that this is being done so as not to jeopardize the veracity of the communication. People hate feeling like they're being lied to. In keeping with this idea of full disclosure, it is no less vital to inform people when an unexpected event is causing a delay. This minimizes their natural tendency to blame you for any perceived delays.
This approach may be successfully applied in any situation where people must be kept waiting for the completion of a task, especially those on which they do not have a crucial time-sensitive dependency. Suggested examples include user interfaces in computer software (usually implemented as the ubiquitous progress dialog/bar), transportation holdups (anything from traffic signals to delays on mass transit systems), customer-service queues (e.g. grocery store checkout, bank teller line-ups, etc.), geographically displaced product preparation/repair (e.g. appliance repair, custom-built items, etc.).
One approximation of regular progress updates is the deadline. It is true that people are much more conducive to long waits if they are given a completion date. However, I posit that this is because they subconsciously translate such a deadline into a sequence of stages that can be treated like progress markers. But you can usually avoid guaranteeing a completion date entirely by simply providing progress updates at a sufficiently high frequency. Furthermore, people will be more receptive to this approach. Now, there are certain conditions under which a deadline is required, such as when people are faced with an externally imposed deadline for a task that depends upon the one you are performing for them, but in those cases people are generally amenable to having their request turned down entirely, as long as this is done up front before they waste time waiting for the completion of a task that may not be done in time. The caveat, therefore, is that the approach described herein applies only when people are waiting for something that they want, rather than something they need within a specific timeframe.
Here are my hypotheses as to why this approach works. For starters, the primary reason people become impatient is usually boredom; they are far less likely to grow impatient when distracted by something. This is why, for instance, waiting rooms stock magazines for people to read while they wait. Another contributing factor to impatience is frustration at a lack of control over the process. Providing regular and frequent progress reports goes a long way toward alleviating that because it gives people a very convincing illusion of being in charge, especially if you provide them with some rudimentary control, such as allowing them to opt out of the process at each stage and providing them with opportunities to specify particulars about how they want some subtasks performed. Note that these details should always be optional as the people ought to have been asked to specify them at the beginning, since they should never be expected to pay attention to any of the status updates along the way. Finally, people frequently grow upset while waiting due to the perception that they are being ignored or that nothing is being done to help them. Again, providing progress reports stifles that quite effectively.
The level of granularity with which progress updates should be provided depends principally upon the length of the task in concern. Unsurprisingly, longer tasks merit more granular updates. But length should be measured relative to the time people will normally expect the task to require, since impatience tends to balloon after a task has exceeded the duration that people initially expected it to take. A good rule of thumb would be to increase update granularity as the progress falls behind typical or initial estimates. Doing the converse (reducing granularity when progress turns out to be significantly quicker than usual/estimated) may be a good idea as well. Of course, dynamic changes in update granularity should be accompanied by an indication that this is being done so as not to jeopardize the veracity of the communication. People hate feeling like they're being lied to. In keeping with this idea of full disclosure, it is no less vital to inform people when an unexpected event is causing a delay. This minimizes their natural tendency to blame you for any perceived delays.
This approach may be successfully applied in any situation where people must be kept waiting for the completion of a task, especially those on which they do not have a crucial time-sensitive dependency. Suggested examples include user interfaces in computer software (usually implemented as the ubiquitous progress dialog/bar), transportation holdups (anything from traffic signals to delays on mass transit systems), customer-service queues (e.g. grocery store checkout, bank teller line-ups, etc.), geographically displaced product preparation/repair (e.g. appliance repair, custom-built items, etc.).