Week 8: The felt wait
An unexplained two minutes is longer than an explained five. That is not a failure of the customer.
26 April 2027
Everything so far has treated waiting as a duration, which is a reasonable enough simplification. Waiting is also an experience, though, and the two come apart in ways that are large, reliably reproducible and, unfortunately, quite exploitable.
The classic result is the airport that solved a baggage complaint problem by making passengers walk further. The wait at the carousel fell; the total time did not change at all. Cynics call that a trick, and sometimes it is, but the underlying finding is real and it is not about gullibility. Occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time. Uncertain waits feel longer than known ones. An unfair wait feels much longer than a fair one of the same length.
The propositions#
The standard set, sorted into the column that matters. The right-hand column is the argument of this lecture and you are allowed to disagree with any row of it.
| Proposition | Illusion, or the wait is genuinely worse |
|---|---|
| Unoccupied time feels longer | Illusion, and correctable |
| Pre-process waits feel longer than in-process waits | Illusion, mostly |
| Anxiety makes waits feel longer | Genuinely worse |
| Uncertain waits feel longer than known ones | Genuinely worse, you cannot plan |
| Unexplained waits feel longer than explained ones | Genuinely worse |
| Unfair waits feel longer than equitable ones | Genuinely worse, and correctly so |
| Solo waits feel longer than group waits | Illusion |
The honest distinction#
Some of these are illusions you can correct. Some of them are not illusions at all. A person waiting for a result that might be bad, with no estimate and no explanation, is not merely feeling worse. They are worse off, and a sign that says fifteen minutes fixes something real.
The design question is which of the two you are doing, because one of them is service and the other is anaesthetic. We spend the last twenty minutes on queues that clearly do the second, including the progress bar that is not measuring anything.
After this lecture#
You can tell the difference between making a wait shorter and making it feel shorter, and you can say which one a sign is doing.
Teaching team
- Priya Raghunathan, Field session tutor