Correct way to textually report the remaining time on a long running process?

Question

So you have a long running process, perhaps with a progress bar, and you want a text estimate of the remaining time, eg: "5 minutes remaining" "30 seconds remaining" etc.

If you don't actually want to report clock time (due to accuracy or resolution or update-rate issues) but want to stick to the text summary, what is the correct paradigm?

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

Do you just pare it down to "A few minutes left" when you're less than 3 minutes?

What is the preferred (least user-frustrating) method?

Answer 1

I would imagine the key thing here is how accurate you expect your calculation to be. If you can't even be sure that the last 60 seconds will be 60 seconds, then you'll have to be a bit vaguer...

Answer 2

Use rounding. 0:30 to 1:29 is "one minute remaining", 1:30 to 2:29 is "two minutes remaining".

I can't say that I've ever seen this before, but I think it makes a small amount of sense.

Answer 3

This is somewhat subjective. However, I would round to the minute until you get down 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"

Avoid using the shortcut "minute(s)". Spend the extra time to output "minute" for one minute and "minutes" for anything greater.