UX Speed Museum

Interactivity is the conversation between a user and an interface. When that conversation has a delay, the experience feels broken, sluggish, or unresponsive. This exhibit demonstrates Input Delay—the time between a user action (like a click or keypress) and the visual feedback from the system.

It is measured using an Interaction to Next Paint metric. First row of controls corresponds to "good" range of the metric (≤ 200ms), second row corresponds to "needs improvement" range (≤ 500ms), and third row corresponds to "poor" range (> 500ms).

Experience how even small latencies (over 100ms) start to erode the feeling of direct control. Feel how infuriating it becomes as you move into "poor" range. Notice how different input elements (buttons, text inputs and checkboxes) feel when visual feedback is delayed.