Craft Note 002 · 26 September 2026Draft
Waiting Is Part of the Experience
The principle behind it: Doherty Threshold · Product psychology
01 The observation
You tap play. Nothing happens for two seconds. So you tap again, and now it loads twice.
02 The idea
Waiting feels shorter when you can see what's happening, and longer when you can't.
Speed matters most. But when you can't be fast, you can still be honest about how long it'll take.
03 The science
In 1982, IBM researchers Walter Doherty and Ahrvind Thadani found that people work much better when a system responds in under about 400 milliseconds, fast enough that neither side waits on the other. Jakob Nielsen's response-time limits add the rest: around 0.1 seconds feels instant, 1 second keeps your train of thought, and past 10 seconds people drift away.
04 In the wild
- YouTube
Shows the shape of the page, grey blocks where the videos will be, before anything has loaded. You're already reading the layout while the content arrives.
- Instagram
Starts uploading your photo while you're still writing the caption. By the time you tap share, most of the waiting has already happened.
05 My take
Spinners are fine for under a second. After that, people want progress, not motion.
And the best wait is the one nobody sees: start the work before the tap. Load the next episode while the credits roll. Warm up the payment while the person is still choosing a plan.
06 The craft rule
If you can't make it faster, make it honest.