JavaTM Look and Feel Design Guidelines: Advanced Topics > Part II: Special Topics > 6: Responsiveness > Problems of Unresponsive Applications

Problems of Unresponsive Applications

Even applications with attractive, intuitive user interfaces can lack responsiveness. Typically, unresponsive applications have at least one the following problems:

• They provide late feedback--or no feedback--for users' requests, leaving users puzzled about what the application has done or is doing.
• When performing extended operations, they prevent users from doing other work or canceling the extended operation.
• They fail to display estimates of how long extended operations will last, forcing users to wait for unpredictable periods.
• They ignore users' requests while doing unrequested "housekeeping," forcing users to wait at unpredictable times--often without feedback.

Each of these problems can frustrate users and lower their productivity.

Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines: Advanced Topics. Copyright 2001. Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.