[HN Gopher] "This Browser Is Lightning Fast": Effects of Messagi... ___________________________________________________________________ "This Browser Is Lightning Fast": Effects of Messaging on Perceived Performance [pdf] Author : cpeterso Score : 76 points Date : 2021-03-12 20:44 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (arxiv.org) (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org) | cblconfederate wrote: | You can fool some people some times, but people use the browser | every day, if it s not fast they ll use another. | | And afaik firefox isn't planning an IPO or being acquired by | google so i dont see why they would want to use these cheap | tricks | hu3 wrote: | Mozilla's main income comes from Google being default search | engine on Firefox. I think it's about half a billion dollars | per year. | | It's in their absolute best interest to market Firefox as much | as possible. | hu3 wrote: | Abstract | | With technical performance being similar for various web | browsers, improving user perceived performance is integral to | optimizing browser quality. We investigated the importance of | priming, which has a well-documented ability to affect people's | beliefs, on users' perceptions of web browser performance. We | studied 1495 participants who read either an article about | performance improvements to Mozilla Firefox, an article about | user interface updates to Firefox, or an article about self- | driving cars, and then watched video clips of browser tasks. As | the priming effect would suggest, we found that reading articles | about Firefox increased participants' perceived performance of | Firefox over the most widely used web browser, Google Chrome. In | addition, we found that article content mattered, as the article | about performance improvements led to higher performance ratings | than the article about UI updates. Our findings demonstrate how | perceived performance can be improved without making technical | improvements and that designers and developers must consider a | wider picture when trying to improve user attitudes about | technology. | fullstckuxdev wrote: | There is no date in the paper... | topaz0 wrote: | March 10, 2021 | | https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.06181 | godelmachine wrote: | Coming straight to it - in my perception, performance-wise | ranking would be - | | 1. Microsoft Edge | | 2. Google Chrome | | 3. Mozilla Firefox | | Although Firefox is a RAM guzzler and can get excruciatingly | slow, I made Firefox my primary browser after I got fed up of | Google AMP, was surprised to so many useful features in Firefox, | such as sending tabs across Mobile - Desktop. | | Edge has done a pretty decent job, thought I have some issues | with their freezing tabs and recently introduced vertical tabs. | toast0 wrote: | I haven't tried the new Edge, but the old Edge used to get into | states where button presses on the controls would be queued. | That's not great for performance perception. (Incidentally, | firefox on Android sometimes gets there too, especially after | viewing npr org, hmm) | godelmachine wrote: | Edge Legacy would be deprecated this year, along with IE, | AFAIK. | astrange wrote: | Firefox has some of the best memory tools and your problems | could always be extensions. (Or if not, getting a content | blocker extension might help.) | | Check about:memory. | progval wrote: | Did you read an article about Edge's performance recently? | jedberg wrote: | I think the priming effect is more subtle though. What people | express _out loud_ might be primed, but their actual feelings may | not change. I wish we had kept the data on this, but our search | experiment at reddit is a good counterpoint: | | At one point we measured how search was doing, so we added a | button to the top of the search results that said "did you find | what you're looking for?". 70% clicked yes. Not great, not awful. | | Then we upgraded the search engine, but didn't tell anyone. | Suddenly that stat jumped to 90%+. But people would still | complain just as much about how bad search is. Many months later, | we finally announced that we had changed the search engine. | | The stats on the button didn't change, but the public narrative | did. So what people say they perceive and how they actually feel | may not necessarily match. | bombcar wrote: | People remember two things - when things don't work, and when | they start working. | | The first is why people will complain something is "crappy" if | they had one bad experience with it, and the second is why the | "new" thing is often perceived as better EVEN if it has more | problems than the old - as long as it doesn't have the same | problems. | | After awhile the "new" wears off and it's crappy again. | dale_glass wrote: | Such things are very tricky, because negative experiences are | remembered vividly. Search working is expected, search not | working is a huge problem. Also, search is a hard thing to get | right. | | When it goes wrong on reddit, it goes annoyingly wrong. For | instance, my main issue is that some searches return a flood of | irrelevant content. Searching for some games brings a flood | from r/GameSwap or some such place. Or, trying to search about | Nikola Corporation will bring up a whole lot of sports | personalities. | | That makes sense in that it's a tough problem to solve, but | what's annoying is that it has to be dealt by hand every time. | I can write a filter, but what I'd really like is a permanent | setting: "I'm not ever interested in results from /r/GameSwap | or /r/SportsSubreddit". Also it might be helpful to be able to | set a limit how much stuff can come from a single subreddit, | because some contain very repetitive content that drowns out | all useful results. | | Edit: Also, search should parse youtube URLs and ignore HTTP vs | HTTPS, youtube.com vs youtu.be and the ?feature=share junk at | the end. I can't be the only one who thinks "This must have | been discussed on Reddit, and the discussion has to be more | useful over there", but Reddit comparing the URLs literally | makes it annoying to find matches. | steve_adams_86 wrote: | I'm not sure why people hate Reddit search so much. I've never | used it much, but when I have, it's been fine over the last | decade or whatever. | | The narrative is so strong though, I'm not sure how you could | defeat that without creating a radically different solution | that derails the narrative. | faizshah wrote: | I've been using reddit since around 2012 and throughout that | time I rarely used Reddit's search mainly because it didn't | search through comments in a post to score relevance. The | only times I would use Reddit's search was if I remembered | some words or phrases in the posts title and I had a specific | post in mind I was looking for. I'm also pretty sure that | back then the relevance of search results in general using | Reddit's search was far inferior to site:reddit.com | specifically in query expansion (synonyms & misspellings in | particular). | | I only started using Reddit's search recently because of | changes to google that make reddit search results have | incorrect times. | FalconSensei wrote: | I hate that in the new design, when I'm IN a specific | subreddit, there's no way to limit search to that specific | subreddit. After the search is done, it'll show a link do | only display results from inside that subreddit, but 100% of | the time I'm in a subreddit, I want results from that | subreddit. | | Edit: adding that because of the search, and lack of managing | multi-reddits, I'm still using the old reddit with the RES | extension | cameldrv wrote: | The fact that the search engine changed though is information. | If the search engine is the same, maybe they had 490 mediocre | experiences with the old one, and then 10 better ones. Since | it's the same search engine, they're going to average all of | those together and say it sucks. | | If you tell them that the search engine is brand new, they'll | reset their expectations and only look at the new data to make | a judgment. | Stupulous wrote: | I am guessing that most people wouldn't use reddit search | because of its reputation, so the 90% of people saying they | found what they were looking for were a small % of users. When | you posted that you updated search, a lot of people who had | given up on it might have tested it out again and changed their | opinions. | | Does that check out with your data? | jedberg wrote: | Sadly I don't remember nor have the data. But that is | certainly possible and could have skewed the data. | kempbellt wrote: | Besides the rare "OMG! This is AMAZING!", people who are upset | by something are much more likely to make noise than people who | are content with it. It's just how we are wired. | | Odds are, no changes you make will completely silence the loud | few, and even if it does, it'll trigger others. You can track | engagement though. If the majority of people silently but | demonstrably show that they enjoy how things are, you have a | solid foundation to build on. The numbers will speak for | themselves. | marcodiego wrote: | A classic: mojave experiment | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsStHxtVr_w | smoldesu wrote: | I'm prepared to catch a lot of shit for this, but I get the | feeling this is where we're at with the M1. Yes, the M1 Macbook | Air is faster than Intel Macs, but that's not a high bar of | entry. People were reasonably frustrated with how Apple gimped | Intel's CPUs to run in ultra-thin machines, so why take that | anger out on Intel? Intel is far from being the best company on | the block (or even the CPU space), but it's pretty concerning to | watch how fast people jump to conclusions based on the messaging | they get from YouTube and Twitter. I've argued about this with | several Apple users, and it always boils down to the same closing | argument: "but I want to use a Mac!" There's nothing wrong with | that, but it's certainly a certainly a better place to start than | "This x is so fast!" | neogodless wrote: | I'm not sure what you're getting at. | | I might agree that the M1 Air being faster than the previous | Macbook Air is one reason why users perceive it as faster, | though that doesn't really explain it seeming "much faster." | You'd also have to argue that Big Sur makes up for some of the | difference, and assume comparisons aren't being made between | updated Intel Macbook Airs. | | I haven't had an opportunity to use an M1-based device, so I | really just have to accept that it's surprisingly fast. Of | course, just like some "want to use a Mac", I "want to use a | gaming PC/laptop" and so I do. And my gaming PC and laptop are | both "very fast." I don't know that their speed would | _surprise_ people coming from older, Intel-based PCs or | laptops, though depending on what they are doing, they might. | | But I still don't know what point you're trying to make. I | guess you're just saying people read that the M1 machines are | fast, and so they think they are. But there also benchmarks | that show it performs remarkably well, on par with low-wattage | Ryzen laptop CPUs and in some benchmarks / single-core with | high-wattage Ryzen desktop CPUs, which are really fast. | toomim wrote: | Great! More Academic articles about how to lie to users and | convince them that your software is better than the competition | without actually making it better. | | Dark Patterns are the new Light Patterns! | toomim wrote: | Here's another academic article about how to lie to your users | from just 8 days ago: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26345283 | | Truth is so 1995. Nobody cares about honesty anymore! | switch007 wrote: | I wonder if we're happier when we're lied to. Reality kind of | sucks | modzu wrote: | brave new world | gumby wrote: | Same old world | _Microft wrote: | Thought experiment: two programs take exactly the same time to | complete a task but one of them is _perceived_ as slow and the | other as fast (for whatever reason). Shouldn 't this make the | latter the better one of the two programs? At least I would | count "being less annoying than the other program" (assuming | that perceived slowness is annoying) as a positive feature. | toomanyducks wrote: | If the only basis for perception of speed is essentially | deceit, ``being less annoying'' means it lies to you more --- | I don't think I'd call that an intrinsically positive | feature. | _Microft wrote: | Why should the perception of speed have to be based on | deceit? | | I bet I would perceive a progress bar that progresses with | constant speed as faster than one that stalls and stutters | even when both of them take the same time to completion. | Even more if the alternative would be an indefinite | progress indicator (hourglass pointer, spinner) that just | goes away when the task finishes. | | On the other hand if the result is that a user is less | annoyed by a process, I do not see why it should be wrong | to convey that feeling artificially by setting up a | situation in which the same result makes them feel better | than in a more "honest" one (as you might call it?). | matthewrobertso wrote: | I definitely agree that showing a progress bar makes a | slow operation feel faster, I've seen this work many | times. | | I think I disagree about the constant speed vs stuttering | progress bar example though - Progress bars which | progress smoothly are great if they are accurate. But | because sometimes a UI will show a fake progress bar | smoothly filling that will empty after filling and fill | again, I've been trained to become skeptical of them. I | don't think I've ever seen a stuttery progress bar that | was "fake" in that way. | RedShift1 wrote: | I agree, instead of making it look faster, make it actually | faster. Websites these days are filled with unnecessary crap | that just slows things down, start by eliminating those things | ffs. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-13 23:01 UTC)