But why? Why misrepresent how long it takes to complete a process, and take up unnecessary time doing so?

It’s not because TurboTax delights in messing with its clients. Instead, the site’s artificial wait times are an example of what Eytan Adar, a professor of information and computer science at the University of Michigan, calls “benevolent deception.” In a paper he published in 2013 with a pair of Microsoft researchers, Adar described a wide range of design decisions that trick their users—but end up leaving them better off.

Benevolent deceptions can hide uncertainty (like when Netflix automatically loads default recommendations if it doesn’t have the bandwidth to serve personalized ones), mask system hiccups to smooth out a user’s experience (like when a progress bar grows at a consistent rate, even if the process it’s visualizing is stuttering), or help people get used to a new form of technology (like the artificial static that Skype plays during quiet moments in a conversation to convince users the call hasn’t been dropped).

The word “deception” has a negative connotation, and lying to users is generally frowned upon. But Adar says it’s actually a useful, beneficial tool if deployed correctly—and that designers have been tricking their users for years, even if they preferred not to think of it that way.

Curiously, the case of the TurboTax animations is a departure from most of the deceptive practices Adar studied: Rather than covering up a system slowdown, it’s introducing one. The delay, it turns out, is meant to build customers’ confidence in the product to which they just entrusted all their financial information.

“The process of completing a tax return often has at least some level of stress and anxiety associated with it,” said Rob Castro, a spokesperson for TurboTax’s parent company, Intuit. “To offset these feelings, we use a variety of design elements—content, animation, movement, etc.—to ensure our customers’ peace of mind that their returns are accurate and they are getting all the money they deserve.”

TurboTax

Adar made a similar decision in a game he designed as an experiment nearly two decades ago. The game, which involved two people negotiating on a price on two separate mobile devices, culminated in a complex step: Both participants’ bids were encrypted, transmitted wirelessly, and compared, and a software program would show whether or not a deal could be reached.

Despite its complexity, this step was nearly instantaneous in the game’s first iteration. But the speed confused people. “Their reaction was, ‘Wow, was that it?’” Adar said. “That was sort of a bummer for us.” He devised a tweak: Instead of happening immediately, the final step launched launched an onscreen animation, which took over the screen with asterisks

The security theater appeared to work. “Their delight seemed to increase—and maybe their confidence as well,” Adar said. (The difference was anecdotal; the researchers never formally tested participants’ reactions.)