This simple brainstorming session isn’t here to break any new ground. Awesome tools such as Medium already make non-blocking UI a core part of the user experience. Instead this mini-article’s goal is to refresh my own thinking with regard to creating a UI that gets out of the way, while still communicating all it needs to to the end user.

I hope you find it useful!

If you liked this article you may be interested in a recent article about

effective prototyping.

Image Upload Case Study

The following example demonstrates a workflow which is still all too common. The user needs to wait for a potentially long running network request to succeed before being allowed to continue working with their document.

Example of a blocking UI

Click here to interact with a live version of this demo.

Optimistic UI Updates

An optimistic UI update is one that assumes the requested operation will finish successfully. Instead of waiting for the image to upload, and then updating the UI, we can instead assume that the upload will succeed and immediately update the interface.

Of course the danger here is that a network request such as a file upload can fail, especially when accessed via cellular network. The solution here is to test for successful completion and then roll back changes after notifying the end user of the problem.

This certainly adds complexity for the development team, however the improvements to the end user’s experience far outweigh the burden of additional development time.

A Potential Optimistic UI Implementation

The following is just one way in which an improved user flow could be implemented.

Improvement 1

Click here for a live version of this demo.

There is an immediate improvement in regard to user flow with this example. Instead of waiting and watching a progress spinner the user can get on with editing the document as the image uploads. Using a progress bar that is visually close the image being uploaded gives the user a good indication of what the application is doing.

We can further make a small improvement though, by more explicitly communicating to the user that an event has occurred.

Improvement 2

Click here for a live version of this demo.

The success notification isn’t strictly necessary, but striking the correct balance between under and over communicating is difficult and you should always resort to user testing to determine where that balance lies.

Conclusion

Start considering non-blocking options for all of your UX/UI design. Your users will love you for it!

If you have any comments then please share them!