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.

Maybe we won't have to push

Maybe the fear of running out of gas will come to end (I’m not referring to alternate energy sources here) due to an improved display design on our dashboard.

We are now aware that this fuel icon has both effective and ineffective qualities to communicate its intention. All of which can be improved to some degree to make the user experience much more satisfying.

Here are my suggestions:

Drilldown and the Mobile Space

Ever since the birth of language, humans have used hierarchical structures to organize information about objects and their meanings. Without this capacity, we would cease to exist. Early mankind was forced to adopt quickly to an information organization system to understand the difference between objects and their relationships. They had to know relationships of predator and prey, between edible and poisonous foods, family and tribes, etc. As their experiences turned into knowledge, the more developed and refined these relationships became.

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.