Studios
Twelve weeks, twelve questions, one file-upload interface that gets progressively harder to lie with.
Every studio runs Thursdays, 14:00–17:00, on the same artefact. Four weeks open with a lecture on the Tuesday; the other eight open with a short framing in the room. Each week below is listed by the question it answers, because the week numbers are not the point.
| Week | The question | Studio | Slides |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · lecture | Looking only at what is on the screen, what has this interface claimed? | 25 Feb | Week 1 deck |
| 2 | What has to be true before the interface is allowed to say "complete"? | 4 Mar | Week 2 deck |
| 3 | When your bar says 40%, forty per cent of what has happened? | 11 Mar | Week 3 deck |
| 4 · lecture | What should the interface show when there is nothing to divide? | 18 Mar | Week 4 deck |
| 5 | You have a denominator. What can you honestly say about time? | 25 Mar | Week 5 deck |
| 6 | Does how the bar moves change how long the wait feels, and how would you know? | 1 Apr | Week 6 deck |
| 7 · lecture | Does your interface still work with the motion off, the mouse gone, and the screen unseen? | 22 Apr | Week 7 deck |
| 8 | Nothing has moved for thirty seconds. What do you say? | 29 Apr | Week 8 deck |
| 9 | When the user presses Cancel, what exactly have you promised them? | 6 May | Week 9 deck |
| 10 | Which of the promises your interface makes can you actually keep? | 13 May | Week 10 deck |
| 11 · lecture | What did watching three people tell you that you could not have worked out at your own desk? | 20 May | Week 11 deck |
| 12 | Can you defend every number left on your screen? | 27 May | Week 12 deck |
Slides
Every week has a deck, and the table above links all twelve. Four of them are lecture decks (weeks 1, 4, 7 and 11); the other eight are the slides the studio's opening framing runs from. They are web pages, so they open in a tab — arrow keys move through them, and ? lists the rest of the shortcuts.
The Waiting Interface Checklist v0
Published in week 2 and standing from then on. It is a standard, not a lesson: week 7 is where you are taught how to meet it, and Assignment 2 is the first time it carries marks.
- Focus is never trapped, and never lost without somewhere to go.
- Every state the interface can be in has a text form.
- No state is signalled by motion alone.
Every studio
What does 99% promise?
The opening autopsy. Take a waiting interface you did not build, list every claim it makes, and find the ones that cannot have a source.
Week 1 · 25 February 2027
What counts as done?
The upload has two states and one of them is a lie. Find out how many states you actually have, and which of them a user is entitled to hear about.
Week 2 · 4 March 2027
Where is the denominator?
Percent of what? Build the same upload twice — counted in bytes, counted in stages — and measure where the two disagree.
Week 3 · 11 March 2027
No idea how long
Three honest ways to say "still going" when there is no denominator at all, and the rule that none of them may imply a fraction.
Week 4 · 18 March 2027
Why the estimate keeps jumping
Three estimators over one recorded transfer. Measure how much each one contradicts itself, then decide what to round to.
Week 5 · 25 March 2027
Motion, and how long it felt
Three animations over identical twenty-second waits, ranked by the class, and a careful account of why that ranking is weak evidence.
Week 6 · 1 April 2027
Understood without the animation
The audit workshop. Turn off the motion, put the mouse away, and find out whether your interface was ever carrying its information in text.
Week 7 · 22 April 2027
Stuck, timed out, disconnected
Three ways a transfer stops without finishing, and the sentences that have to be true when it does.
Week 8 · 29 April 2027
Cancel and retry
Two buttons that make promises. Write the promise down first, then find out whether your code keeps it.
Week 9 · 6 May 2027
Numbers without sources
Week 1 turned inward. Every number, phrase and movement on your own screen, traced back to the event that produced it, or deleted.
Week 10 · 13 May 2027
Watching someone wait
Three classmates, fifteen minutes each, one stall they were not warned about. Then the harder part — deciding which of what you saw is worth acting on.
Week 11 · 20 May 2027
The last percent
Eight minutes each. Drive the interface through success, stall and failure, then defend one claim you knowingly kept.
Week 12 · 27 May 2027