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Performance Is Good for Brains [We Love Speed 2...

Tammy Everts
September 18, 2024

Performance Is Good for Brains [We Love Speed 2024]

User experience and web performance are among the best indicators of online business outcomes. Faster websites have happier users. Those happy users visit longer and spend more. But why is that?

When we think about web performance, it’s easy to fall into an abyss of metrics. Backend time, Start Render, Core Web Vitals, Lighthouse scores… these metrics are useful and necessary, but they’re just a means to an end: Understanding how to create faster, more joyous user experiences.

In this talk, we walk through a brief history of UX and web performance research, highlighting key studies that connect the dots between performance and user experience and sharing some educated guesses about new metrics that are just around the corner.

You’ll take away insights into why slow sites enrage you, and why you should prioritize making your own sites and apps as fast as possible for your own users.

We still have so much to learn. Some day we’ll laugh at how much we assumed and how little we actually knew. But if we stay on course, we’ll get there.

Tammy Everts

September 18, 2024
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  1. Made pages 1.9 seconds faster, increased conversion rate by 94%

    1-second improvement, 14% decrease in bounce rate and 13% increase in conversions Improved Largest Contentful Paint by 31%, increased sales by 8% WPOstats.com
  2. 18

  3. Women tend to underestimate prospective time estimations compared to men.

    This suggests they may perceive time to be passing by more slowly.
  4. Women tend to underestimate prospective time estimations compared to men.

    This suggests they may perceive time to be passing by more slowly.
  5. Over time, the rate at which we process visual information

    slows down. This is what makes time ‘speed up’ as we grow older.
  6. Users aged 65+ are 43% slower at using websites than

    users aged 21-55 nngroup.com/articles/usability-for-senior-citizens/
  7. 38

  8. 43

  9. 45

  10. “…a state in which people are so involved in an

    activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” Mihály Csíkszentmihályi Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990)
  11. 48

  12. 49

  13. 50 Image by BalashMirzabey on Freepik It can take up

    to 23 minutes to regain focus after an interruption
  14. 51 Productivity It can take up to 23 minutes to

    regain focus after an interruption
  15. 52 Productivity Wellbeing It can take up to 23 minutes

    to regain focus after an interruption
  16. What we say we want vs. what we need 1999

    • 8 seconds 2006 • 4 seconds Now • 2 seconds
  17. A wait longer than 2 seconds breaks concentration and affects

    productivity Robert Miller Response Time in Man-Computer Conversational Transactions
  18. A wait longer than 2 seconds breaks concentration and affects

    productivity Robert Miller Response Time in Man-Computer Conversational Transactions 1968
  19. 58 “We want you to be able to flick from

    one page to another as quickly as you can flick a page on a book. So, we’re really aiming very, very high here… at something like 100 milliseconds.” Urs Hölzle SVP Engineering, Google
  20. 64

  21. “When, as with the Progressive JPEG method, image rendition is

    a two-stage process in which an initially coarse image snaps into sharp focus, cognitive fluency is inhibited and the brain has to work slightly harder to make sense of what is being displayed.” Dr. David Lewis Chair, Mindlab International
  22. Steve Souders Author, High Performance Web Sites “The real thing

    we are after is to create a user experience that people love and they feel is fast…
  23. …and so we might be front-end engineers, we might be

    devs, we might be ops, but what we really are is perception brokers.” Steve Souders Author, High Performance Web Sites “The real thing we are after is to create a user experience that people love and they feel is fast…
  24. Biggest measurement mistakes 1. Not measuring at all You can’t

    fix what you don’t measure. 2. Assuming your experience is universal “It’s fast enough on my desktop/phone.”
  25. Biggest measurement mistakes 1. Not measuring at all You can’t

    fix what you don’t measure. 2. Assuming your experience is universal “It’s fast enough on my desktop/phone.” 3. Not monitoring continuously Things can change suddenly (e.g., server issues, third parties).
  26. Biggest measurement mistakes 1. Not measuring at all You can’t

    fix what you don’t measure. 2. Assuming your experience is universal “It’s fast enough on my desktop/phone.” 3. Not monitoring continuously Things can change suddenly (e.g., server issues, third parties). 4. Not monitoring real users Synthetic measurements are only snapshots. CrUX data is not comprehensive RUM.
  27. Biggest measurement mistakes 1. Not measuring at all You can’t

    fix what you don’t measure. 2. Assuming your experience is universal “It’s fast enough on my desktop/phone.” 3. Not monitoring continuously Things can change suddenly (e.g., server issues, third parties). 4. Not monitoring real users Synthetic measurements are only snapshots. CrUX data is not comprehensive RUM.. 5. Not focusing on the right metrics e.g., “Load time” is dated; Core Web Vitals are only available in Chromium browsers.
  28. Biggest measurement mistakes 1. Not measuring at all You can’t

    fix what you don’t measure. 2. Assuming your experience is universal “It’s fast enough on my desktop/phone.” 3. Not monitoring continuously Things can change suddenly (e.g., server issues, third parties). 4. Not monitoring real users Synthetic measurements are only snapshots. CrUX data is not comprehensive RUM. 5. Not focusing on the right metrics e.g., “Load time” is dated; Core Web Vitals are only available in Chromium browsers. 6. Looking only at averages or medians Measure at 75th and 95th percentiles to understand the breadth of user experiences.
  29. Optimize the entire experience 1. Eliminate confusion whenever possible Don

    Norman, Cofounder/emeritus, Nielsen Norman Group
  30. Optimize the entire experience 1. Eliminate confusion whenever possible 2.

    Make the wait appropriate to the results Don Norman, Cofounder/emeritus, Nielsen Norman Group
  31. Optimize the entire experience 1. Eliminate confusion whenever possible 2.

    Make the wait appropriate to the results 3. Meet or exceed expectations Don Norman, Cofounder/emeritus, Nielsen Norman Group
  32. Optimize the entire experience 1. Eliminate confusion whenever possible 2.

    Make the wait appropriate to the results 3. Meet or exceed expectations 4. End strong Don Norman, Cofounder/emeritus, Nielsen Norman Group
  33. Made pages 1.9 seconds faster, increased conversion rate by 94%

    1-second improvement, 14% decrease in bounce rate and 13% increase in conversions Improved Largest Contentful Paint by 31%, increased sales by 8% WPOstats.com
  34. The Psychology of Site Speed and User Happiness speedcurve.com/web-performance-guide/the-psychology-of-web-performance/ Why

    Waiting Is Torture nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/why-waiting-in-line-is-torture.html Wrinkles in Subsecond Time Perception Are Synchronized to the Heart onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/psyp.14270 Sex Differences in Time Perception During Self-paced Running ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5065319/ Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/why-the-days-seem-shorter-as-we-get-older/ Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress ics.uci.edu/~gmark/chi08-mark.pdf Response Time in Man-Computer Conversational Transactions dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1476589.1476628 Website Response Times nngroup.com/articles/website-response-times/ Progressive Image Rendering: Good or Evil? radware.com/blog/applicationdelivery/wpo/2014/09/progressive-image-rendering-good-evil/ The Psychology of Waiting Lines Don Norman – jnd.org/the-psychology-of-waiting-lines/ Sources