Acceptable Response Times
Some user interface events require shorter response delays than others. For example, an application's response to a user's mouse click or key press needs to be much faster than its response to a request to save a file. The table below shows the maximum acceptable response delay for typical interface events.
| UI Event | Maximum Acceptable Response Time |
|---|---|
| Mouse click, pointer movement, window movement or resizing, keypress, button press, drawing gesture, other UI input event involving hand-eye co-ordination | 0.1 second |
| Displaying progress indicators, completing ordinary user commands (e.g. closing a window), completing background tasks (e.g. reformatting a table) | 1.0 second |
| Displaying a graph or anything else a typical user would expect to take time (e.g. displaying a new list of all a company's financial transactions for an accounting period) | 10.0 seconds |
| Accepting and processing all user input to any task | 10.0 seconds |
Make each response delay in your application as short as possible, unless users need time to see the displayed information before it is erased. The acceptable response delay for each event is based on a typical user's sense that the event is a logical point at which to stop or pause. The greater that sense is, the more willingly the user will wait for a response. Verify that your application responds to users' requests within the limits listed in the table above. If your application cannot respond within those limits, it probably has one or more general problems caused by a particular algorithm or module.
- Verify that your application provides feedback within 100 milliseconds (0.1 second) after each key press, movement of the mouse, or other physical input from the user.
- Verify that your application provides feedback within 100 milliseconds (0.1 second) after each change in the state of controls that react to input from the user— for example, displaying menus or indicating drop targets.
- Verify that your application takes no longer than 1 second to display each progress indicator, complete each ordinary user command, or complete each background task.
- Verify that your application takes no longer than 10 seconds to accept and process all user input to any task—including user input to each step of a multistep task, such as a wizard.