3 ms·

I agree. As much as people appreciate the factoid, it's not an example of good design. I don't ever recall the arrow being paid attention to until listicles an

I agree. As much as people appreciate the factoid, it's not an example of good design. I don't ever recall the arrow being paid attention to until listicles and other blog spam were born. It has all the elements of great clickbait.

gk1 10mo ago
I actually use it all the time when driving a rental.
- mhdhn 10mo ago
  I use it all the time because I switch between a lot of different cars a lot, and my memory is not that great.
- jquery 10mo ago
  That isn’t in conflict with it being bad design.
  - mschild 10mo ago
    True. Though im unsure of what would be a better one. Doesnt get much simpler than an arrow. Id think that for a car you own you wouldnt need it after the first few times though.
    - chillstreem 10mo ago
      a better solution would have been to have an industry wide standard icon for the fuel inlet and then an arrow would point on which side of the vehicle it is. The way it is now with the pump icon really can be confusing. If the arrow is pointing right, it seems to be suggesting the driver should go to the right of the pump which is obviously wrong. I like the way EVs have the squiggly hose icon and that tells you everyting.it doesn't depict the charger station, but the plug point on the vehicle.
      - lucketone 10mo ago
        “Directions are ambiguous, when somebody says turn right, I grab the wheel by the bottom and move the hand to the right” *Technically* it could be less ambiguous, but actually it is good enough. If memorising this is hard, not a big problem, parking next to fuel pump twice is not that huge of a damage.
      - rtgfhyuj 10mo ago
        in the absence of industry wide standards, this is an ingenious design, 100% best thing possible
mayneack 10mo ago
I use it regularly
jquery 10mo ago
It’s terrible design. Until I encountered one of these listicles I had no idea what that arrow was.
icambron 10mo ago
I use it regularly when driving an unfamiliar car. I also don’t think it’s ambiguous: it’s a drawing of a gas pump and an arrow telling you where it should be from here, which is a convention from signage the world over. “Paris ->” has never meant “you are this way relative to Paris.” The design I used to find confusing was the controls for periodic windshield wipers: does the width the triangle indicator represent frequency or period? I eventually just managed to memorize that it means frequency because you get more wiping as you turn it “up”. I don’t think anyone else ever found this ambiguous; we all have our little intuition gaps, I guess.
- sublinear 10mo ago
  Well, you need to pull up to the side of the gas pump. It's not an "intuition gap". The arrow is ambiguous. You don't pull up next to Paris, but I would get a chuckle if the icon had a little Eiffel tower instead of a gas pump.
  - rtgfhyuj 10mo ago
    nah, the pump is visibly physically, dont need an arroq thats idiotic
maxerickson 10mo ago
Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. The fact that it is consistent across vehicles sort of mitigates the problems with it. "Arrow points at fuel door" is not actually hard to remember.

gk1 10mo ago

I actually use it all the time when driving a rental.

mhdhn 10mo ago
I use it all the time because I switch between a lot of different cars a lot, and my memory is not that great.
jquery 10mo ago
That isn’t in conflict with it being bad design.
- mschild 10mo ago
  True. Though im unsure of what would be a better one. Doesnt get much simpler than an arrow. Id think that for a car you own you wouldnt need it after the first few times though.
  - chillstreem 10mo ago
    a better solution would have been to have an industry wide standard icon for the fuel inlet and then an arrow would point on which side of the vehicle it is. The way it is now with the pump icon really can be confusing. If the arrow is pointing right, it seems to be suggesting the driver should go to the right of the pump which is obviously wrong. I like the way EVs have the squiggly hose icon and that tells you everyting.it doesn't depict the charger station, but the plug point on the vehicle.
    - lucketone 10mo ago
      “Directions are ambiguous, when somebody says turn right, I grab the wheel by the bottom and move the hand to the right” *Technically* it could be less ambiguous, but actually it is good enough. If memorising this is hard, not a big problem, parking next to fuel pump twice is not that huge of a damage.
    - rtgfhyuj 10mo ago
      in the absence of industry wide standards, this is an ingenious design, 100% best thing possible

mayneack 10mo ago

I use it regularly

jquery 10mo ago

It’s terrible design. Until I encountered one of these listicles I had no idea what that arrow was.

icambron 10mo ago

I use it regularly when driving an unfamiliar car. I also don’t think it’s ambiguous: it’s a drawing of a gas pump and an arrow telling you where it should be from here, which is a convention from signage the world over. “Paris ->” has never meant “you are this way relative to Paris.” The design I used to find confusing was the controls for periodic windshield wipers: does the width the triangle indicator represent frequency or period? I eventually just managed to memorize that it means frequency because you get more wiping as you turn it “up”. I don’t think anyone else ever found this ambiguous; we all have our little intuition gaps, I guess.

sublinear 10mo ago
Well, you need to pull up to the side of the gas pump. It's not an "intuition gap". The arrow is ambiguous. You don't pull up next to Paris, but I would get a chuckle if the icon had a little Eiffel tower instead of a gas pump.
- rtgfhyuj 10mo ago
  nah, the pump is visibly physically, dont need an arroq thats idiotic

maxerickson 10mo ago

Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. The fact that it is consistent across vehicles sort of mitigates the problems with it. "Arrow points at fuel door" is not actually hard to remember.