Differences between revisions 12 and 13
Revision 12 as of 2011-02-27 00:37:01
Size: 2276
Editor: eberkman
Comment:
Revision 13 as of 2011-02-27 00:37:54
Size: 2300
Editor: eberkman
Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 2: Line 2:
''Get ready to push!''

Get ready to push!

Driving cross country in you car can be quite exciting. Whether it’s stopping in small, quaint towns hardly noticeable on a map, flying down coastal highways with perililous views from below, or enjoying the endless horizons of the plains. However, that state of happiness is usually immediately broken when you notice out of the corner of your eye, the low fuel status icon has now appeared.

To me, this indicator is a design that creates more mental load than necessary. I’m in the middle of no where, I haven’t seen a gas station or fuel information sign in miles and now on top of my uneasiness, I must calculate and predict how far I can go without running out of gas. Here’s what going on in my head:

  • Did this status light just go on?
  • Or has it been on for many miles?
  • How many miles am I going to have to walk to find a gas station after I ran out of gas?
  • Do I have the appropriate walking shoes?

However, bad it may appear, this icon does have some good qualities.

  • It is universally understood. The icon's graphic clearly represents it’s meaning without ambiguity.
  • It turns on before I run out of gas, giving me some time to plan my next steps.
  • Its luminance is clearly different from the background and any other status icons that might be on and visible.

So this icon has both effective and ineffective qualities. All of which can be improved to some degree to make the user experience much more satisfying.

Here are my suggestions:

Make the initial warning light blink on and off with added pauses in a calculated repetition. Because our short term memory can only hold about three chunks of information at a time, we usually store chunks that are important to the task at hand. If a warning status light appears on without undergoing periodic state changes, our current attention will not focus on it and forget it’s even there.

NEVER just put text down without link styling or an indicator!

Super duper need a compare table here, and maybe some extra text about how to choose which one. So me discussion under the Indicator pattern.

Drilldown (last edited 2011-12-13 15:50:02 by shoobe01)