The right way to text report the remaining time in a long process?

Question

So, you have a long process, possibly with a progress bar, and you want to get a textual estimate of the remaining time, for example: “5 minutes remaining”, “30 seconds remaining”, etc.

If you really do not want to report the time of the clock (due to accuracy or resolution or update errors), but want to stick to the summary of the text, what is the correct paradigm?

Is "one minute" left from 0 to 60 seconds? or from 1:00 to 1:59? Say 1:35 Left - is it that "2 minutes left" or "1 minute left"?

Do you just pare it down to "Few minutes left" when you are less than 3 minutes?

What is the preferred (least frustrating user) method?

Answer 1

This is somewhat subjective. However, I would take a moment until you drop to 30 seconds.

01:02:05 = "1 hour 2 minutes remaining"
00:02:35 = "3 minutes remaining"
00:02:29 = "2 minutes remaining"
00:01:35 = "2 minutes remaining"
00:01:05 = "1 minute remaining"
00:01:00 = "1 minute remaining"
00:00:59 = "Less than 1 minute remaining"
// Switch to seconds at :30
00:00:30 = "30 seconds remaining"
00:00:29 = "29 seconds remaining"

Do not use the label "minute (s)". Spend extra time to output “minutes” for one minute and “minutes” for something more.

Answer 2

Use rounding. 0:30 to 1:29 - “minute remains”, from 1:30 to 2:29 “two minutes left”.

I can’t say that I have ever seen this before, but I think it makes little sense.

Answer 3

I would suggest that the key thing here is how accurate you expect your calculation to be. If you can’t even be sure that in the last 60 seconds there will be 60 seconds, then you will have to confuse a little ...