Swim Blog The Business Value of a Real-time User Interface

Latency is an issue that would upset a gamer playing online or frustrate a movie-watcher choosing between films. Unfortunately, it has become a normalized part of modern user interfaces in the business world. This issue is especially concerning for enterprise UIs, such as business intelligence dashboards because decisions are made using supposedly fresh data and insights that are not truly real-time. Misleading UIs with latency that are advertised as “real-time” are commonplace, yet most people are unaware and do not comprehend the limitations of the applications they are using. It’s an expected part of using technology today that the UI you’re using will only ever be a shadow of what’s happening in real life, an echo of the real action. Real-time user interfaces present a paradigm shift –– both in the nature of the technology at hand and the expectations users will have once they encounter real-time UIs.