What to do and not to do while waiting for content to load
Scaffolding is quite a nice a design pattern: When waiting for the real content, a generic silhouette of the kind of content that will soon be loaded is shown temporarily. Thanks to the scaffolding, users know what to expect and rendering engines can immediately render the rest of the page, for users to explore while waiting.
But recently, I have repeatedly come across a similar but much less friendly kind of scaffolding: A technically robust fallback for worst case scenarios.
Suddenly, I get unexpected negative messages such as
- No such user
- Invalid request
- Permission denied
- Warning, system not responding
- File could not be found
- Network error
- Server unreachable
Such messages briefly appear on my screen immediately after I start some applications or go from one screen to another. A fragment of a second later they are usually replaced by the fully functioning app or website.
Sometimes the message is not possible to see, because it disappears so quickly. But since I am often using a screen reader, I hear it, until it is interrupted by the newly loaded screen/page.
