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Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Short screech. Long screech. Static. More beeps. On September 30, one of the most memorableif not infuriatingwaiting experiences since the dawn of the internet went the way of the dodo. AOL finally discontinued its dial-up service. If you grew up in the 90s, you knew that sound by heart. Some of you also knew to bring a newspaper while waiting for a single web page to load. AOLs iconic 30-second symphony of screeches and static wasn’t just the sound of connection. It was the sound of anticipation, of mandatory patience in an increasingly impatient world. Today, that pause is all but extinct. Pages load more or less instantly, apps respond in milliseconds, and information moves faster than we can formulate a complete thought. Technological advances have virtually eliminated the wait, but waiting isn’t wasted time. Studies have shown that simple pauses can help strengthen our self-control, and savoring the anticipation of an event can help us prolong pleasure. Our overstimulated brains might find the wait to be frustrating, but underneath all the noise, we just want a quiet moment of pause. Waiting gives us a chance to rest and reflect. This is as true of the real world as it is online. That’s why designers are sneaking the wait back into modern digital experiences. The Return of the Pause On a recent afternoon, I had to call my medical provider to ask a question. When someone picked uppredictably, a voice botI provided my name and date of birth. Then something interesting happened. Instead of processing my information in digital silence, or to the sound of hold music, the bot pretended to type it into a keyboard. I heard a click, clack, click, clack. The built-in typing may not have been totally for showperhaps the software genuinely needed the processing time. But it was designed to humanize my interaction, to mimic what psychologists call “conversational rhythm, in which pauses signal thought, consideration, and care. The concept translates to digital experiences, too. Take OpenAIs GPT-5. While previous versions typed out answers slowly, like a typewriter, the early version of GPT-5 dumped the full answer in one go. Some users found it hard to engage; others found it boring. “It just slammed a wall of text at me,” Marcel McVay, director of UX and digital solutions at Octo, tells me. “It was so much information at the same time, that it was off-putting.” [Illustration: FC] What users were missing is called sequencing, otherwise known as the deliberate pacing of information delivery. When your car dashboard lights up one indicator at a time rather than all at once, that’s sequencing. When ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity type out responses like a vintage typewriter rather than slamming the complete answer instantly, that’s sequencing, too. With large language models (LLMs), information delivery was slowed down to mimic the pauses that occur in natural conversation, and to help people process information like they are used to. “If someone doesn’t pause to think about what you just said, did they even hear you?” McVay says. He is currently working on a dementia care app, called Plans4Care, that aims to help support and guide people dealing with degenerative brain diseases. He says the app, which is currently being tested in clinical trials, doesnt require a lot of processing time to load. But his team still built in a loading screen that shows the brands logo plus a rolling selection of comforting quotes and accompanying images. While technically unnecessary, the loading screen serves to pace the users experience. Its a place where we remind you, were Plans4Care, and were here to support you, McVay says. Making the Wait Worthwhile Sometimes, of course, wait time remains necessary, and companies have learned to transform these delays into brand opportunities. The Calm app invites you to “take a deep breath” while it loads meditation content. Duolingo’s mascot Duo gives you quirky language facts during brief loading screens. Expedia calls to your wanderlust with a loading spinner in the shape of a traveling plane. These moments aren’t just distractionsthey’re what Clinton Gorham, brand consultant and founder of the Gorham Agency, calls “movie trailers,” or brief moments that set the mood and manage expectations. “Smart brands treat that sliver of time as a mini canvas to make an impression, he says. The strategy isnt exactly new. In the 1950s, office building tenants in a Manhattan high-rise complained about slow elevators. Rather than installing faster machineryan expensive solutionbuilding managers installed mirrors in elevator lobbies. Suddenly, complaints plummeted. The wait time hadn’t changed, but the mirrors had transformed dead time into useful time, and people were too busy checking their appearance to notice the delay. David H. Maister, an authority on service management and the psychology of waiting in line (or a queue, as they say in the U.K.), calls this phenomenon the “occupied time principle.” The British-born former Harvard professor has stated that occupied time (spent on any activity) feels shorter than unoccupied time (free from activity). User experience designers today are using the same trick. Some years ago, UX designer Tej Kalianda was working on ShareConnect, an iPad app that allows users to securely connect to and control their computers from anywhere in the world. The app’s complex authentication and secure connection setup processes meant that it took users 35 seconds to connect. It also meant they consistently dropped out. “They thought the app was broken,” says Kalianda, who now works at Google but spoke to me in a personal capacity. The engineering team couldn’t reduce the wait time, so Kalianda decided to keep users busy while they waited. She created random, visually engaging loading screens that changed every time someone connected. “Instead of fighting the delay, I embraced it,” sh explains. And her efforts paid off. The company’s Net Promoter Score jumped from 40 to 45, and she says user feedback shifted from “This thing doesn’t work” to “I love how smooth the connection feels.” Like with the elevators, the wait time never improvedonly the perception of it. Yet users were measurably happier because they were engaged and entertained. The aesthetics of waiting A 90s kid would barely recognize the internet today. We have gone from screechy dial-up connections and songs that took 20 minutes to download to TikTok trends that circle the globe in seconds. But it’s not just speed that’s changedthe entire aesthetic of waiting has evolved along with it. Back then, waiting looked like a progress bar crawling across a gray dialogue box, or “loading . . .” text blinking in a browser. The internet felt mechanical, utilitarian. But over the next few decades, companies developed their own visual language of waiting. Some, like Microsoft, took the literal approach with sand falling through an hourglass. Others, like Apple, embraced abstraction with a colorful beach ball that spun cheerfully while our computer screens froze. More recently, Slack turned waiting into a fun distraction with messages like “reticulating splines” (a callback to loading screens from games like SimCity). Meanwhile, Perplexity narrates its thought process, and Uber loads a grayed-out skeleton of its layout, helping you visualize whats to come. In a world that never stops scrolling, these pausesengineered or notare a welcome reminder that anticipation can be a feature, not a bug. I never thought I’d say this, but watching an app load is starting to feel like a simple, grounding moment that makes us feel a little more human.
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E-Commerce
Taylor Swifts highly anticipated 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl, is here. And this might be Swifts biggest release yet, given that along with an album, shes also premiering a film on the same day. Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl features a new music video for the album’s single The Fate of Ophelia, lyric videos, and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage and commentary. Its being hosted as a companion event by AMC, Cinemark Theaters, and Regal Cinemas. The catch? Its showing in theaters for just three days: October 3 to 5. The brief theatrical window follows the same pattern Swift has used to release limited-edition versions of her past albums and merch that are often available only on her site for a short amount of timecreating a sense of urgency for fans. According to some analysts, replicating the strategy of generating fast ticket sales in a limited timeframe is beneficial not only for Swift but also for the major movie theater chains. Who wouldn’t want to cut out the middleman these days? Brandon Katz, director of insights and content strategy at Greenlight Analytics, posited to Fast Company. AMCs unique distribution deal with Taylor Swift allows them to bypass film studios and create more tailored deal terms. It represents a unique new business model for theaters, though one that isn’t easily repeatable. Exhibitors will also receive a new theatrical product headlined by the most famous entertainer on the planet at a time when wide-release volume is still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels. That’s helpful. Even without a traditional marketing runway, Showgirl will attract attention. The Taylor Swift effect The Life of a Showgirl is an appropriately named album for arguably one of the worlds biggest pop stars, who has built an empire from her music since she was 16 years old, creating a devoted fandom of “Swifties.” In the past few years, Swift seems to have been busier than ever. She rerecorded her first six albums, reclaiming her music after the original masters were sold by her first record label (she eventually was able to buy the original masters back). She performed around the world on her 21-month-long Eras tour. And in August, she got engaged to Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce after a whirlwind two-year romance that saw her become a fixture at NFL games, including Super Bowl LVIII. She also teased the new album in her appearance on Jason and Travis Kelces New Heights podcast). Her impact on any business she’s involved with has been so significant that it’s been given a namethe Taylor Swift effect,” which experts say reflects the singer-songwriter’s strong economic force. Companies have been keen to take advantage of that Swift effect whenever they can. For instance, when The Life of a Showgirl was announced, many immediately adopted the albums orange aesthetic and font style in their own social media posts. Spotify launched a pop-up merch shop in New York, while other brands, including Uber Eats, are hosting special deals and pop-up events to celebrate the release. This isnt the first time Swift has released a theatrical film. Following the end of the Eras tour in 2023, she released Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour film, bypassing traditional studios and instead signing a deal directly with AMC Theaters. The film went on to earn roughly $261 million at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing concert film ever. Later, Swift struck a deal with Disney for the films streaming rights. This is the first time, however, that Swift is premiering a movie to coincide with a new album on the same day. Again, shes skipping studios and releasing the film through AMC, Cinemark, and Regal Cinemas. Last month Deadline reported that the film had already raked in $15 million in first-day presales and that sources were projecting it to make between $30 million and $50 million over the October 3 weekend. A Swift business model According to data from Greenlight Analytics, the concert films Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (with willingness to pay, or WTP, at 53%) and Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé (with WTP at 52%) generated fan enthusiasm on par with Elvis (with WTP at 63%), suggesting that live-music experiences for big-name artists can generate long tails of monetization opportunity. Katz said that while releasing the film is a good idea for Swift, exhibitors, and the domestic box office, he emphasized that this isnt going to usher in a new genre of film, since only stars at Swifts level will be able to generate respectable box office revenue or streaming interest. For the majority of artists thinking about chasing a similar goal, the juice would not be worth the squeeze, Katz said. However, Swift is clearly continuing to move into the movie industry: In addition to the Eras Tour and Party of a Showgirl films, shes reportedly developing a feature project for Searchlight Pictures.
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E-Commerce
How can you get ahead in your career and still enjoy the ride? One solution offered in business books, LinkedIn posts, and team-building manuals is to use humor. Sharing jokes, sarcastic quips, ironic memes, and witty anecdotes, the advice goes, will make you more likable, ease stress, strengthen teams, spark creativity, and even signal leadership potential. We are professors of marketing and management who study humor and workplace dynamics. Our own researchand a growing body of work by other scholarsshows that its harder to be funny than most people think. The downside of cracking a bad joke is often larger than what you might gain by landing a good one. Fortunately, you dont have to tell sidesplitting jokes to make humor work for you. You can learn to think like a comedian instead. Humor is risky business Comedy works by bending and breaking normsand when those rules arent broken in just the right way, its more likely to harm your reputation than to help your team. We developed the benign violation theory to explain what makes things funnyand why attempts at humor so often backfire, especially in the workplace. Essentially, humor arises when something is both wrong and OK at the same time. People find jokes funny when they break rules while seeming harmless. Miss one of those ingredients when you tell a joke and your audience wont appreciate it. When its all benign and theres no violation, you get yawns. When its all violation and not benign, you could end up triggering outrage. Its hard enough to get laughs in the darkness of a comedy club. Under fluorescent office lights, that razor-thin line becomes even harder to walk. What feels wrong but OK to one colleague can feel simply wrong to another, especially across differences in seniority, culture, gender, or even the mood theyre in. The hit sitcom The Office pokes fun at the cringeworthy jokes cracked by a hapless boss. An advertising study In our experiments, when everyday people are asked to be funny, most attempts land flat or cross lines. In a humorous caption contest with business students, described in Peter McGraws book on global humor practices, The Humor Code, the captions werent particularly funny to begin with. However, the ones that were rated by judges as the most funny were often also rated the most distasteful. Being funny without being offensive is of paramount importance. This is particularly true for women, as a robust literature shows women face harsher backlash than men for behavior seen as offensive or norm-violating, such as expressing anger, acting dominantly, or even making asks in negotiations. Dont be that guy. You might end up getting no respect Research by other scholars who examine leader and manager behavior in organizations tells a similar story. In one study, managers who used humor effectively were seen as more confident and competent, boosting their status. Yet when their attempts misfired, those same managers lost status and credibility. Other researchers have found that failed humor doesnt just hurt a managers statusit also makes employees less likely to respect that manager, seek their advice, or trust their leadership. Even when jokes land, humor can backfire. In one study, marketing students instructed to write funny copy for advertisements wrote ads that were funnier, but also less effective, than students instructed to write creative or persuasive copy. Another study found that bosses who joke too often push employees into pretending to be amused, which drains energy, reduces job satisfaction, and increases burnout. And the risks are higher for women due to a double standard. When women use humor in presentations, they are often judged as being less capable and having lower status than men. The bottom line is that telling a great joke rarely gets you a promotion. And cracking a bad one can jeopardize your jobeven if youre not a talk show host who earns a living making people laugh. Flip the script Instead of trying to be funny on the job, we recommend that you focus on what we call thinking funnyas described in another of McGraws books, Shtick to Business. The best ideas come as jokes, advertising legend David Ogilvy once said. Try to make your thinking as funny as possible. But Ogilvy wasnt telling executives to crack jokes in meetings. He was encouraging employees to think like comedians by flipping expectations, leveraging their networks, and finding their niche. Comics often lead you one way and then flip the script. Comedian Henny Youngman, a master of one-liners, famously quipped, When I read about the dangers of drinking, I gave up . . . reading. The business version of this convention is to challenge n obvious assumption. For example, Patagonias Dont Buy This Jacket campaign, which the outdoor gear company rolled out on Black Friday in 2011 as a full-page ad in The New York Times, paradoxically boosted sales by calling out overconsumption. To apply this method, pick a stale assumption your team holds, such as that adding features to a product always improves it or that having more meetings will lead to smoother coordination, and ask, What if the opposite were true? Youll discover options that standard brainstorming misses. Create a chasm When comedian Bill Burr has his fans in stitches, he knows some people wont find his jokes funnyand he doesnt try to win them over. Weve observed that many of the best comics dont try to please everyone. They succeed by deliberately narrowing their audience. And we also find that businesses that do the same build stronger brands. For example, when Nebraskas tourism board embraced Honestly, its not for everyone in a 2019 campaign, targeting out-of-state visitors, web traffic jumped 43%. Some people want hot tea. Others want iced tea. Serving warm tea satisfies no one. Likewise, you can succeed in business by deciding whom your idea is for, and whom its not for, then tailoring your product, policy, or presentation accordingly. Cooperate to innovate Stand-up may look like a solo act. But comics depend on feedbackpunch-ups from fellow comedians and reactions from audiencesiterating jokes in the same way lean startups may innovate new products. Building successful teams at work means listening before speaking, making your partners look good, and balancing roles. Improv teacher Billy Merritt has described three types of improvisers. Pirates are risk-takers. Robots are structure builders. Ninjas are adept at both: taking risks and building structures. A team designing a new app, for instance, needs all three: Pirates to propose bold features, robots to streamline the interface, and ninjas to bridge gaps. Empowering everyone in these roles leads to braver ideas with fewer blind spots. Gifts arent universal Telling someone to be funny is like telling them to be musical. Many of us can keep a beat, but few have what it takes to become rock stars. Thats why we argue that its smarter to think like a comedian than to try to act like one. By reversing assumptions, cooperating to innovate, and creating chasms, professionals can generate fresh solutions and stand outwithout becoming an office punchline. Peter McGraw is a professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Adam Barsky is an associate professor of management at The University of Melbourne. Caleb Warren is a professor of marketing at the University of Arizona. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Category:
E-Commerce
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