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Every time you watch a little bar on your app move from \u201corder placed\u201d to \u201cout for delivery,\u201d you have Domino\u2019s to thank. <\/p>\n
In the mid-2000s, David Haubenstricker was in Domino\u2019s IT department when the company was struggling after scrapping its famous 30-minute delivery guarantee, according to NPR\u2019s Planet Money podcast<\/a>. Customers were getting too anxious waiting for their pizzas to arrive without any way to know what was actually happening. So Haubenstricker\u2019s team built the Domino\u2019s Pizza Tracker, a real-time animation of a pizza\u2019s journey from order to delivery. It debuted before the 2006 Super Bowl and became an instant sensation.<\/p>\n That idea has since spread everywhere. Design director Shuya Gong told NPR she now calls this pattern \u201cthe pizza tracker\u201d with clients across all kinds of industries \u2014 Uber and repair shops all use some version. Researchers call the psychology behind it the \u201clabor illusion,\u201d seeing evidence of work in progress makes people trust and value the wait.<\/p>\n But it has a darker side too. Gong said she\u2019s helped banks intentionally slow down trackers for transactions that actually happen instantly, because the real speed felt unsettling. TurboTax\u2019s status animations reportedly run the same length regardless of what\u2019s actually happening behind the scenes.<\/p>\n