Fragment 71 of 72 · drawer 06
Progress bar with no sound
An intentionally quiet score showing that the absence of acoustic feedback can itself structure waiting behaviour.
- Accession
- MW-F-071
- Representative period
- Negative acoustic specimen
- Drawer
- Acoustic notation
- Certainty
- interpretive
Progress bar with no sound
Negative acoustic specimen
Observed surface
00–70% no audible distinction
70–99% no audible distinction
99% hold room tone unchanged
Implied procedure
The visual estimate performs all communication while the machine may sound exactly as it did before the task.
A listener in another room cannot distinguish progress, pause, or failure.
Interpretive residue
Silence transfers vigilance to the screen.
Where older mechanisms leaked activity, a quiet interface asks the person to return, look, and interpret.
Accountability record
Evidence beneath the reconstruction.
These institutional sources support the mechanism or historical practice interpreted above. They do not contain this reconstructed record, its wording, or its invented values.
- ACM · 1985 The importance of percent-done progress indicators for computer-human interfaces Brad A. Myers' 48-participant experiment: 86.1% preferred the percent-done condition, a result reported with p = .0006. The paper studied rather than invented the progress bar. Open institutional record ↗
- Nielsen Norman Group · 1993–2024 Response Times: The Three Important Limits A durable summary of the rough thresholds at which interaction feels immediate, continuous or attention-breaking. Open institutional record ↗