Estimating/forecasting download completion time

Question

We\'ve all poked fun at the \'X minutes remaining\' dialog which seems to be too simplistic, but how can we improve it?

Effectively, the input is the set of downloa

Answer 1

Don't confuse your users by providing more information than they need. I'm thinking of the confidence interval. Skip it.

Internet download times are highly variable. The microwave interferes with WiFi. Usage varies by time of day, day of week, holidays, and releases of new exciting games. The server may be heavily loaded right now. If you carry your laptop to cafe, the results will be different than at home. So, you probably can't rely on historical data to predict the future of download speeds.

If you can't accurately estimate the time remaining, then don't lie to your user by offering such an estimate.

If you know how much data must be downloaded, you can provide % completed progress.

If you don't know at all, provide a "heartbeat" - a piece of moving UI that shows the user that things are working, even through you don't know how long remains.