How Web Performance Is Perceived By Users
NET|June 2017

In this article, Denys Mishunov explores how the brain perceives web performance and introduces us to Psychological Performance Optimisation (PPO)

How Web Performance Is Perceived By Users

Before getting to the psychological part of performance optimisation, let’s answer one question, what is web performance? For the majority of frontend developers the answer would include something exciting like: 100-millisecond response time, animations with 60 frames per second, loading a page within one second and many other numbers. Guess what? The world is a cruel place and unfortunately not only web developers have access to the web. It’s a public place that is also used by regular users who seem to be forgotten in our definition of performance. But what do they think about web performance? Usually it’s fast or slow. “SpeedIndex of this site isn’t as good as of that one. 280 milliseconds slower first paint is the reason, I guess,” – said no user without DevTools ever. These diverging views on performance come from the fact that time can be observed from two points: objective and subjective or psychological.

Objective is the time we can measure with a stopwatch and is what we, developers, mean by performance: seconds, milliseconds, etc. On the other hand psychological time is the time as it’s perceived by users. The reason why we should be looking at psychological performance is that unless users perceive the site as fast or faster, whatever we’ve done to our performance optimisation matters very little. We fail the main purpose of our optimisations.

TIME PERCEPTION IN HUMANS 

Perception of time by humans is a complex process. We can sense the flow of time, but the exact nature of the mechanism by which this is done remains unclear. The lack of a dedicated brain area for temporal processing makes understanding the process difficult. This does not mean we are out of control. There is enough knowledge about it for the purpose of performance optimisation. Let’s start with the basic functional mechanism.

EVENT IN A NUTSHELL

This story is from the June 2017 edition of NET.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

This story is from the June 2017 edition of NET.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.

MORE STORIES FROM NETView All
Camille Gribbons
NET

Camille Gribbons

UX designer at Booking.com, Camille Gribbons reveals how she first got into the industry

time-read
7 mins  |
June 2020
THE 5G UI REVOLUTION
NET

THE 5G UI REVOLUTION

Tris Tolliday describes his vision of a web UI catapulted forwards by 5G

time-read
3 mins  |
June 2020
HOW TO SHOWCASE YOUR DEV SKILLS
NET

HOW TO SHOWCASE YOUR DEV SKILLS

Aude Barral shares 5 top tips for landing your dream developer job

time-read
3 mins  |
June 2020
KNIVES OUT
NET

KNIVES OUT

Murder mystery film, Knives Out, grabbed everyone’s attention, and so did the fun website that promoted it. Oblio tells Tom May how it created its innovative 3D navigation

time-read
6 mins  |
June 2020
HOW EMOTIONAL LABOUR HINDERS WOMEN IN TECH
NET

HOW EMOTIONAL LABOUR HINDERS WOMEN IN TECH

Christine Brewis, head of digital marketing at Studio Graphene, discusses how gender parity in tech has changed over the last ten years, and what more can be done

time-read
5 mins  |
June 2020
EDAN KWAN
NET

EDAN KWAN

He swapped life as a singer for a career making eye-popping digital visuals. The Lusion founder chats to Tom May about battling demons, winning awards and where digital advertising is heading

time-read
8 mins  |
June 2020
ANDREW COULDWELL
NET

ANDREW COULDWELL

The Brit in LA discusses his new book on design systems, Laying the Foundations

time-read
3 mins  |
June 2020
Top 5 Tips For Ensuring Web Content Is Accessible For All
NET

Top 5 Tips For Ensuring Web Content Is Accessible For All

Merlyn Meredith outlines five top tips for ensuring web content is accessible for all

time-read
2 mins  |
May 2020
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR BROWSERS?
NET

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR BROWSERS?

Nico Turco examines the state of play with browsers, whether developers should encourage diversity or monopoly and how Google fits into it all

time-read
6 mins  |
May 2020
YEARS IN THE MAKING
NET

YEARS IN THE MAKING

Exclusively for net: The latest in a series of anonymous accounts of nightmare clients

time-read
3 mins  |
May 2020