For more than 12 years, I’ve been staring at this gas gauge that looks like it’s divided into quarters but is actually bigger towards F and smaller towards E. The discrepancy is easier to see with the gauge rotated.
Nissan gas gauge
It’s just weird and confusing. I’d like to know why they did it this way. The only plausible reason I can think of is that this car has a large reserve of 3 gallons once the needle drops to E and the gas light comes on. So taking the reserve into account, the last ‘quarter’ on the gauge kind of makes sense.
LPT: See the arrow next to the gas pump icon? That tells you which side of the car the gas cap is. Useful in rentals!
On dump trucks, I frequently see a tiny sign on the back (often partially covered in dirt) that reads:
Warning Stay Back 200 ft. Not responsible for broken windshields!
These signs are not only too small to read from 200 feet away as we’ll see, but it’s also unclear why not staying back might result in a broken windshield.
Dump truck sign on the back
See how small the sign is?
Here’s a picture of a dump truck on the highway approximately 200 feet away. I could barely tell there was at sign at all.
Dump truck approximately 200 ft. away
And here is the back of the truck at approximately 20 feet away. The image quality is low but it demonstrates just how small and illegible these signs are from the suggested 200 feet away.
Dump truck approximately 20 feet away
Some might say, “Once you’re close enough to see the sign, you’re too close so the sign is telling you to back off.” I say, if you expect people to stay 200 feet away, your sign should be visible from that distance, probably more.
Design Recommendations
The back of a dump truck has a lot of real estate for a sign; use it! I created a sign that is highly visible while also informing drivers why they should stay back. A distance of 200 feet seems arbitrary, so I would depend on drivers to choose a safe distance.
I’ve been using Waze for a few months now, and every now and then, a bar shows up on the left side. I’d glance down and see that it showed “something” was estimated to happen (or last?) for a few minutes, but I could not figure out what. We have a hands-free law here, so I could not legally take my phone off its holder and look at it more closely.
Waze app in my car
The screen is probably 18″ from my eyes and I wear polarized sunglasses which makes the app even harder to interpret when glancing down for fractions of a second.
It took using Waze as a passenger to see that the bar’s label also had the word “Jam” (traffic jam?) in a light blue font. However, other times I’ve been driving and the bar has no label, so I’m still not sure what it’s for!
Waze left bar with no label
Design Recommendation
This is an easy one. Change the font color to white and bold it so that the word “Jam” is just as visible as the time estimate. And always include a label to indicate why the bar is there.
