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:

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

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:

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.