Comment by psadri

Aside for the algorithms and how well they work, there is a psychological aspect to how people perceive "wait" times. It turns out just waiting is very annoying. But having people do anything during that same wait period → perceived as progress → not upset.

An example iirc was waiting for luggage at the airport. It takes min of x minutes for the first bags to show. In one version, passengers went directly from the gate to the luggage carousel and waited x mins for the first bag → unhappy. Then the airport decided to add a long, round-about "walk" path from the gate to the luggage area that burned some of those minutes → same total "wait" but happier passengers.