Alternate titles: Progress bar, Percentage done meter.
The user wants to complete a goal but needs guidance in when it is reached and how to reach it.
▲ The fact that my profile is only 80% done seduces me to interact more with the website in order to get it up to 100%.
Divide and end-goal into several sub-tasks. The end-goal can be arbitrarily defined, such as “Completeness of your profile” or “Elite member”. As each sub-task is completed, the percentage of completed tasks goes up – reaching 100% when the goal is finished.
It is often seen that along with stating the progress of the goal (for instance: “34% done”), one or more links or hints to how the progress can be improved is also provided. This will help keep the user on track and immediately move to the next task once one has been completed.
There are several approaches on how to inform and celebrate that all sub-tasks and thus also the end-goal has been completed. One is simply to indicate that now all tasks has been completed (as in “Your profile is complete!”) along with a “100%” mark. Another is to award the user with a collectible achievement: a badge, trophy, or similar award that he or she can decorate his personal profile with and show off to his or her friends.
A third way to celebrate completing the goal and its sub-tasks is to announce it in his or her profile feed, or even on a centralized site-wide feed.
This pattern uses a set of psychological drivers that pushes the user to move forward towards the end goal.
One is curiosity. We are curious to find out what happens when we reach 100%. Will I be rewarded or will my profile look different?
Another is the feedback loop. As the user completes sub-tasks, his or her progress moves towards 100%. A clear link between completing tasks and reaching the end goal has been established.
As humans, we feel inclined to complete goals we have decided upon and their tasks. Most often we choose for ourselves what goals we want to spend time on completing, where after we put our mind into it.
The Completeness Meter pattern is an attempt to present such a goal to the user in order for him or her to decide completing it. By presenting easily completed sub-tasks, it is possible to convince and persuade the user into spending time he or she in other circumstances wouldn’t have.
1 comment
Diana on Jul 08, 2009
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I agree that 80% is a good incentive. But 30% strikes me as a disincentive unless it’s a high stakes context, as LinkedIn’s job profiles are. I don’t have time for 70% to help out a website feel complete.
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