Whenever an application stalls or gets unresponsive, the user’s aggravation level rises exponentially with each second that the application ceases interacting with the user or fails to communicate that it is working on something in the background. Hence, the user resorts to rage clicks.
People frequently consider their user interface in physical terms. A ‘window,’ not ‘a rectangle of lights on a matrix,’ comes to mind. As a result, when an application hangs, users, revert to dealing with it in the same way they would with a broken physical object.
Many people appear to try to ‘repair’ a real object that isn’t working by shaking it, and the digital equivalent is incessant clicking – or rage clicks.
Why do users click randomly and rapidly when an application hangs?
When an app freezes for more than a few seconds, we repeatedly begin to click on insignificant locations, as though this will somehow “wake it up.” Even worse, users who have discovered that all those clicks will queue up and fire off when the application answers again will opt to click in an area with no known active ability.
Users tend to click repeatedly since they have been used to expecting an update each time they perform an action, and clicking allows them to see if the app has expected behavior or at least a reaction that tells them about what they can do.
The reason why some users press the space bar key repeatedly may be due to its huge size and the ease with which one can click it repeatedly in the hopes of eliciting a response. The enter key is typically used to go to the next phase, and users may believe that persistently pressing the enter key will help them get over this difficult stage and load the subsequent step.
Ultimately, the escape key is pushed, as it has come to represent an attempt to escape away from the action the user is performing on the computer or for closing something, and therefore an attempt to get out of this predicament.
While a click wasn’t picked up by the computer for whatever reason, clicking again when nothing appeared to be occurring usually fixed the problem since the computer would take notice of the click; therefore, clicking was a technique of double-checking that you had clicked and that it had been recognized by the computer. The fact that it frequently succeeded reinforced the behavior, and people ‘learned’ to do it to ensure that the click wasn’t ignored.
What do I do if my application keeps getting hanged?
Some common causes of an application hanging could be: Virus or malware attack, memory space constraints, overheating of the system, unsupported software, and not applying the most recent Windows updates. In many circumstances, outdated drivers cause operating systems to behave erratically and freeze, so keeping them up to current is critical. To update your outdated drivers, go to the manufacturer’s or Microsoft’s official websites and look for the most recent update for your drivers to prevent this from happening.
