[redler]

The trick is to smoothly animate the filling of a random percentage of the remaining unfilled bar between, say, 30% and 70%, with the timing of the advancements themselves slightly randomized. A sort of Zeno’s progress bar. It will neither peg at 100 nor shoot past, and the pulses feel “organic”. Bonus points for advancing the bar to known fixed points of progress when real feedback is received.

[TeMPOraL]

The amount of complexity needed to lie to the user this way is becoming comparable with the amount needed to do the job right in the first place.