Video games commonly show helpful hints during loading screens. This has a two-fold benefit for the player - it alleviates the boredom of waiting, and it provides game play hints that the player might have not otherwise thought to look for.

Software developers also experience 'loading screens' - we wait for code to compile, tests to run, type checks to run, build pipelines to complete, infrastructure to provision, etc.

These are all opportunities to display handy hints.

If the loading screen occurs on a SaaS platform, then the SaaS provider could provide hints about using the product.

If the loading screen occurs in a terminal, in-house hints about working with the codebase can be provided, for example, 'did you know run tests against just affected files with X script?'.

Some SaaS providers do display something in their loading screens - Netlify for example display a game of memory while users wait for deployments.

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Get in the comments! 👇