What each week's lecture argues, Tuesdays, across the twelve teaching weeks.
Twelve lectures, Tuesdays. Each page says what that week’s lecture argues and nothing else, because the session page owns the readings, the workshop and what you should be able to do afterwards.
Read a lecture page to find out what position the week takes. Read its session to find out what you do about it.
Two durations, one wait
The opening lecture, on the two numbers every wait has and why only one of them is the course's subject.
Week 1 · 16 February 2027
Where the thresholds came from
Why interface guidance has three numbers in it, who measured them, and what they were measuring at the time.
Week 2 · 23 February 2027
What a spinner is allowed to say
The indeterminate progress indicator, read as a component with exactly one message and a great deal of silence around it.
Week 3 · 2 March 2027
The bar is not the process
Determinate progress, where the system commits to a number it does not have, and the design space that opens once you accept that.
Week 4 · 9 March 2027
Showing the work
Operational transparency, and the finding that people can prefer a slower service that lets them watch it work.
Week 5 · 16 March 2027
Filling the time
The techniques that consume attention during a wait rather than reducing it, and the question of what that attention is worth.
Week 6 · 23 March 2027
The fair queue and the fast queue
Why a queue people believe in outperforms a queue that is merely quicker, and what first in first out is actually protecting.
Week 7 · 13 April 2027
The genre of the hold
What you are given during a wait, treated as authored material with a history, a genre and an economics behind it.
Week 8 · 20 April 2027
Who is asked to wait
Waiting as a distribution rather than an experience, and the queue as an instrument of state and market power.
Week 9 · 27 April 2027
Delay on purpose
Latency added rather than removed, and the line between a deception that serves the person and one that serves the system.
Week 10 · 4 May 2027
The wait you remember
Duration neglect and the peak-end rule, and why the last minute of a wait is worth more than the middle of it.
Week 11 · 11 May 2027
Defending a wait
The closing lecture, on what it means to design a wait you are not allowed to shorten, and who you answer to when you do.
Week 12 · 18 May 2027