While you're right that people sometimes value operations that take time, that's certainly an edge case - in general, snappiness leads to a better user experience.
Also: if an operation is fast, you always have the option to make it appear slower. The inverse is not true.
> in general, faster operations leads to a better user experience
That's just too general of a statement. That's like saying a landing page with a hero image is, generally, a better page. It's a good place to start, but it's just bad advice in the long-term.
I agree that response times from the backend should be fast, especially the initial response (as the article mentions). But anything on the frontend experience should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
Every time I've ever conducted user experience testing the results have always been far more positive the faster the app or page is. In fact, while it's still only anecdotal, I have never seen a decrease in any of the overall measurements of a user study where, between two versions, the speed of the app or page improved and little else changed.
Honestly I think it's a great general statement. I'm sure there are exceptions but that's the case with almost any general rule of thumb.
> That's like saying a landing page with a hero image is, generally, a better page.
No, not at all. Speed isn't everything and no one was suggesting that. A faster application, however, is always better than a slow one as long as you are comparing apples to apples.
With the way technology works nowadays it's actually very doable to get the 75th percentile to load really, really fast. But it's not without effort and earlier work may need to be redone, something many avoid at all costs.
If the UI is quick to inform I'm happy to wait for a big task to finish.
Even if the message is nonsense, I just want to know work is still occurring
"Reticulating splines" may not mean the app is just reticulating splines, but I know it's doing something, and I'm less concerne my Sim City hasn't loaded
But with things like my iPhone where the UI just halts after some requests and quits responding to input without me knowing why, is bullshit
I want my software to listen to me and inform me about the status of work I'm performing
I wish more work was done in operating system UIs informing users. I use a terminal a lot and can see what's going on as I work
The OS should be capable of detecting overload, and take control enough to alert to degraded general operation and inform as to what's up. Possibly offering options to resolution
Also: if an operation is fast, you always have the option to make it appear slower. The inverse is not true.