Making waiting less dull
Myers (1985) showed progress indicators make waits more tolerable, and Maister (1985) noted that unoccupied and uncertain waits feel longer. Skeleton screens combine both insights: instead of a blank page or spinner, they preview the shape of incoming content, so users feel something is already arriving and can scan the layout early.
What the research says
Harrison et al. (2007, 2010) showed that changing progress-bar pacing or visual effects makes identical durations feel shorter. Hohenstein et al. (2016) found perceived performance varies by loading-screen type, and Mejtoft et al. (2018) found skeleton screens tend to feel faster, though differences can be small. As Nah (2004) showed, feedback extends tolerance, but it never replaces real speed.
Doing it well
Draw skeletons at the real layout size so content does not shift in, protecting CLS in Core Web Vitals. Skip them for loads under a second and prefer determinate progress bars for long tasks. Screen-reader users need state cues such as aria-busy. As the peak-end rule suggests, a smooth final transition matters. The payoff is largest in slow-network mobile contexts.
FAQ
- How do skeleton screens differ from spinners?
- A spinner only says 'wait', while a skeleton previews the coming structure, feeling faster and letting users orient early.
- When should you skip them?
- For loads under a second, where they only flicker, and for very long tasks that need a progress bar.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-27
References
- Myers, B. A. (1985). The importance of percent-done progress indicators for computer-human interfaces. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 11–17). ACM. Classic evidence that progress indicators make waits more tolerable.
- Maister, D. H. (1985). The psychology of waiting lines. In J. A. Czepiel, M. R. Solomon, & C. F. Surprenant (Eds.), The service encounter (pp. 113–123). Lexington Books. Principles of waiting psychology, such as unoccupied time feeling longer.
- Harrison, C., Amento, B., Kuznetsov, S., & Bell, R. (2007). Rethinking the progress bar. In Proceedings of the 20th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (pp. 115–118). ACM. Shows progress-bar pacing changes perceived duration.
- Harrison, C., Yeo, Z., & Hudson, S. E. (2010). Faster progress bars: Manipulating perceived duration with visual augmentations. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1545–1548). ACM. Visual augmentations made identical waits feel about 11% shorter.
- Nah, F. F.-H. (2004). A study on tolerable waiting time: How long are Web users willing to wait? Behaviour & Information Technology, 23(3), 153–163. Shows feedback changes how long users will wait.
- Hohenstein, J., Khan, H., Canfield, K., Tung, S., & Perez Cano, R. (2016). Shorter wait times: The effects of various loading screens on perceived performance. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3084–3090). ACM. Compares loading-screen types for perceived performance.
- Mejtoft, T., Långström, A., & Söderström, U. (2018). The effect of skeleton screens: Users' perception of speed and ease of navigation. In Proceedings of the 36th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (pp. 1–4). ACM. A rare direct experiment on skeleton screens and perceived speed.