I consider this to be a common problem.
Most devices we carry with us and use are good at repetitive, boring tasks. This should always be leveraged fully. One thing I think we should look more into is having applications retry when a task fails.
I have never understood why things like re-attempting a download or similar things require user interation. Clearly the user wants this thing to be downloaded, can you not just make it so? The most common reason that causes annoyance for me if it's because the network is down temporarily. In this case I would like to only get a message on the screen saying it can't reach the network right now.
Facebook Messenger, for example, is implemented wrong: if a message doesn't to through instantly (from either the mobile app or the web interface), it will just give up and make the user click retry again and again until it works. I understand that people don't necessarily to have their instant messages delivered three days later, but at least don't give up right away. At least give me the option to have it retry without any further interaction (either for a while, or indefinitely). The message that's on the very top when I'm merely inside the app doing nothing would have been more than sufficient for me.
Gmail's web interface, on the other hand, does not require any user interaction what-so-ever. When there are problems, it's clear that the network is down. It's retrying, with a countdown timer and something that I can click manually if I want it to retry now. I like it a lot.
While each particular scenario where it would make sense to retry something could have more functionality, the general rule of the week is:
If your application can retry, it should do so without any user interaction a reasonable amount of times.
Most devices we carry with us and use are good at repetitive, boring tasks. This should always be leveraged fully. One thing I think we should look more into is having applications retry when a task fails.
I have never understood why things like re-attempting a download or similar things require user interation. Clearly the user wants this thing to be downloaded, can you not just make it so? The most common reason that causes annoyance for me if it's because the network is down temporarily. In this case I would like to only get a message on the screen saying it can't reach the network right now.
Facebook Messenger, for example, is implemented wrong: if a message doesn't to through instantly (from either the mobile app or the web interface), it will just give up and make the user click retry again and again until it works. I understand that people don't necessarily to have their instant messages delivered three days later, but at least don't give up right away. At least give me the option to have it retry without any further interaction (either for a while, or indefinitely). The message that's on the very top when I'm merely inside the app doing nothing would have been more than sufficient for me.
Gmail's web interface, on the other hand, does not require any user interaction what-so-ever. When there are problems, it's clear that the network is down. It's retrying, with a countdown timer and something that I can click manually if I want it to retry now. I like it a lot.
While each particular scenario where it would make sense to retry something could have more functionality, the general rule of the week is:
If your application can retry, it should do so without any user interaction a reasonable amount of times.
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