Product: Altia Engineering Services

Altia: The Complete HMI Platform for Automotive Cockpit Displays

Posted on by Cheryl Falk

As the automotive industry moves closer and closer to fully autonomous, even lower end vehicles are evolving into rolling computers—with ever-increasing interconnectivity and complexity in the vehicle cockpit. Car buyers now expect to be connected to the outside world—and OEMs are responding to their requirements. It is estimated that by 2030, 95% of all new vehicles will incorporate intermediate or advanced infotainment, telematics and V2X capabilities to communicate between vehicles, users and infrastructure.

With these dramatic shifts in technologies from more mechanical and analog controls to those that are partially or fully digital, automotive OEMs are challenged with anticipating how customers interact with their vehicles, namely through the human-machine interface (HMI).

The HMI acts as a hub of the wheel for the vehicle cockpit’s connected user experience, integrating the spokes that provide information to the driver while sending commands to the various systems both inside and outside the car. The considerable shift toward electrification and autonomous vehicles has resulted in new regulatory requirements. These requirements have compelled OEMs and suppliers to invest more R&D into user interface hardware and software lifecycles and integration, whether their digital cockpits include a multitude of dedicated displays in a single vehicle to just a single in-dash touchscreen.

But the simplicity of a well-architected UI masks great complexity. Cockpit software design includes many considerations, such as how to integrate multiple compute domains and vehicle applications across varying operating systems. Customers have grown accustomed to smartphones being at their side—so how can OEMs keep them connected to their communication and entertainment while adhering to regulations for driver safety and attention? How can OEMs maintain brand continuity between native HMI screens, multiple connectivity solutions and those of the passengers’ personal devices? This is a complex challenge encompassing a vast number of varying requirements, especially given the increase in autonomy. OEMs can embrace these challenges by leveraging a production-proven platform to bring this all together efficiently.

Meeting OEM Challenges with Proven Innovation

Altia delivers a single, comprehensive platform to meet OEM’s cockpit software challenges and the needs and expectations of their customers. They provide a complete end-to-end cockpit software solution for OEMs by combining the best design tools, advanced technology, customization capabilities and expertise within one unified platform.

Altia has helped some of the largest OEMs create custom HMIs in various vehicles as well as develop and deploy their entire software stack—from sedans, SUVs, semis and motorcycles to electric construction-agriculture equipment and everything in between. The integration of Altia’s powerful features and hardware flexibility in over 100 million production vehicles on the road have been shaping the industry. Altia’s software solution is at the heart of over 375 vehicle dashboards for the upcoming generation.

A Comprehensive Collection of Tools and Expert Service

Altia’s cockpit software platform sets the standard for designing, developing and deploying innovative, first-class automotive user experience. The platform enables display design and deployment on any screen within a car, including instrument clusters, HUDs, infotainment displays, passenger displays and rear passenger entertainment systems. No matter how grand and challenging your vision is, Altia can enable a seamless look and feel in your vehicle cockpits to provide an immersive experience that is representative of the brands across your fleet of vehicles. By reusing the core of your work, Altia enables you to keep design cost-efficient while enabling endless opportunities to differentiate. Providing the tools and expert support you need to bring your UI from concept to production quickly and efficiently, Altia’s HMI development platform saves time and reduces production costs.

Altia Advantages for Automotive

  • Hypervisor operations — HMI cockpit operates on both sides of your hypervisor
  • Code generation — Quick conversion of HMI prototypes and graphics to deployable graphics code across a wide range of hardware
  • Integration and display management — Guidance on how to manage and integrate cockpit real estate to create cohesive and intuitive signature UIs for customers while maintaining brand identity
  • Head-up display expertise — Best-in-class HUDs integration to show system information and advanced driver-assist system (ADAS) warnings to keep drivers’ eyes on the road
  • Automated testing solutions — Reduction in time-to-market HMI testing costs, minimizes human error

Integrations

Altia’s cockpit HMI platform can seamlessly integrate the following services and applications into your displays:

  • Android Auto and Apple CarPlay
  • Third-party mapping programs
  • ADAS
  • Media players
  • Telematics units
  • Automotive infrastructure integrations via Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X)

Altia Software Tools and Services Support Every Step of Your HMI Process

With the increasing complexity in the automotive world and increasing demand for OEMs to pull user experience and data ownership in-house, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with an approach to managing it all. Altia is here to bring all the pieces together and help OEMs to realize their automotive user experience goals. Altia guides OEMs through designing, developing and deploying their custom automotive cockpits.

Altia’s complete automotive software platform supports every step of the development process, from concept design through delivery. Altia automotive solutions enable OEMs to meet their digital cockpit goals today and in the future. Altia understands these system complexities and has the proven tools to help you with your automotive software challenges.

Ready to start your automotive cockpit development journey? Altia delivers the expertise, software and services to guide you throughout the process to meet your needs and realize your goals. We would love to hear about your project and how we can help you get it on the road.

Visit www.altia.com/get-started.

Altia ON: 2025 Cadillac ESCALADE IQ

Posted on by Cheryl Falk

The 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ is an innovative electric SUV that will combine top-tier luxury with cutting-edge technology. GM relies on Altia for getting its most advanced, intuitive graphics into production – and this cutting-edge redesign of Cadillac’s flagship turned EV will definitely deliver. 

Here’s what we’re most excited about in the Escalade IQ. 

The cockpit interface is incredibly user-friendly, with intuitive menus and rapid responses. Multi-tasking is a breeze, allowing drivers to simultaneously view navigation, play music and monitor vehicle stats without switching screens. Voice recognition, augmented reality navigation and integration with popular apps ensure that drivers are safe, comfortable and connected.

The dash is composed of a sprawling, curved pillar-to-pillar 55″ total diagonal LED display powered by a Snapdragon Cockpit platform from Qualcomm Technologies. Spanning the entire front row, it provides a stunning visual experience for driver and passenger. This massive display is segmented to serve the different needs of front seat passengers—with 35″ dedicated to the driver and 20″ dedicated to the passenger. The passenger side of the display is polarized—making it less visible to the driver thus reducing distraction and clearing the regulatory hurdle that will let passengers stream video or surf the internet while the electric Escalade is on the move. The display can be customized with different themes, widgets and apps, including voice-controlled services like Google Assistant, Google Maps and Google Play.

Beneath the 55″ screen combination sits an 11″ touchscreen where driver and passenger can access five-zone climate controls, ambient lighting and even the doors (if equipped with the power open-and-close feature).

That cool, connected experience of the Cadillac Escalade IQ extends to the back seat. For models with the Executive Seating package, second-row passengers get two 12.6″ personal screens plus a rear command center screen to control comfort, lighting and more.

Designing, developing and deploying this kind of brand-defining innovation in cockpit displays is exactly what Altia does. We work with automotive OEMs and Tier 1s all over the world—including General Motors—to deliver first class cockpit experiences for production vehicles. Let us help you with your next generation production program. Visit www.altia.com/get-started today.

Enhancing EV Charging Station UX and Why It Matters

Posted on by Cheryl Falk

If electric vehicles, or EVs, are the future of the automotive industry, are charging stations the new gas stations? It certainly seems that way, which means the EV charging market is primed for explosive growth. The rise of electric vehicles is creating an increased demand for charging stations. Every opportunity to differentiate a charging station can help businesses capture market share. One such opportunity is in the EV charging station display.

EV Charging Stations by the Numbers

As automotive companies continue to roll out new electric vehicles, the discussion turns to how those vehicles can stay charged:

  • Annual EV sales grew 19,000% in the United States between 2010 and 2020. As technology and public opinion evolve, the electric vehicle market is growing exponentially. It’s projected that there will be as many as 35 million EVs on the road by 2030 in the United States alone.
  • There are already an estimated 53,000 public charging stations in the United States, according to Porch Research.
  • The International Council on Clean Transportation predicts massive growth in the U.S. charging infrastructure between now and 2030.
  • The growth isn’t limited to the United States. Global Newswire forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 44% for the electric vehicle charging station market until 2027.

Legacy automotive brands are riding the EV wave instead of trying to swim against it. General Motors CEO, Mary Barra, has set a goal for the company to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2035. All of those vehicles will need to be charged. Investors, businesses and even governments are pouring resources into their efforts to build the charging stations that will power the electric future of the automotive industry.

Defining and Designing the Charging Station

Thanks in part to a $135 billion commitment from the U.S. government, the United States should have a national network of 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030. Because these charging stations are public, they’ll have to accommodate all the different types of vehicles. Every vehicle can accept a different power level from the electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE).

When a driver plugs in an electric vehicle, there is a brief communication between the EV and EVSE before charging begins. The car requests information about how much power the charging station can deliver. The EVSE returns an answer. Then the car requests the maximum power the charger can provide, and the vehicle can accept. From there, the car controls the voltage and will continue to charge until it’s full.

What Do Charging Stations Display?

There are three different levels of electric vehicle charging with various display functionality:

  1. Level 1 120V EV home chargers typically don’t have displays.
  2. Level 2 chargers, from 240V for home or 208V for commercial chargers, generally have simple displays. The charger might show the time to completion and display the battery level with an animated charge progress bar.
  3. Level 3 480V EV chargers, including Direct Current Fast Charging (DCFC) and the Tesla Supercharger, offer the most advanced displays. If the EVSE can charge more than one vehicle at a time, it might have multiple displays. These chargers typically have all the EV charging station display features from Level 2, plus a video screen for news headlines and ads.

As more users begin to use charging stations, expectations are rising. Those who wish to win EVSE market share must develop competitive EV charging station displays.

What Drivers and Passengers Need from Charging Stations

EV charging stations aren’t just the gas stations of the future. They’re also travel lodges of the future. People might spend significant time at these stations while waiting for their vehicles to charge. Not all EV charging stations are built the same, and the differences matter more for extended visits. It’s critical to create the right user experience, which means considering the following:

Prioritize Ease of Use

Early adopters have already had EVs for years, and now the early majority is starting to embrace electric vehicles. Social reasons for going electric are even encouraging some people who typically don’t adopt technology, especially quickly. As a result, new users of all ages and comfort levels will be interacting with EV charging station displays.

To accommodate a diverse user base, an EV charging station display must be user-friendly and intuitive. Simple screens should provide clear instructions. Touch screens should enable easy navigation. There must be convenient payment options and a clear path to payment.

Users want to know where they are in the charging process and take control of the charging experience as much as possible. Some users prefer to monitor and manage the experience via a mobile app or the in-vehicle interface, so the EVSE must be compatible with other technologies. Diagnostic information, troubleshooting workflows and live support help guide the user to a satisfying experience.

Ensure High Visibility

The EV charging station display will likely be outside, requiring it to be visible in all conditions. It will need the right type of screen to make the charging status visible to the user. When designing an EVSE, it can be helpful to generate code and test it in various real-world scenarios—including sun, shade, partial light and full darkness.

Performance Matters

An EVSE has to offer flexible charging speeds to accommodate different types of EVs as well as user preferences. Then there’s the performance of the EV charging station display itself. When the user wants to modify the charging performance, the interface needs to be responsive enough to make that happen. GUI code that has been optimized for the display hardware makes graphics perform more smoothly. Testing that code on production-intent hardware ensures that the display is adequately responsive to touch.

Inform and Entertain

The U.S. Department of Transportation reports that a fully electric vehicle might take 4-10 hours to gain a full charge from Level 2 charging. This speed makes it more suitable for locations where the driver spends significant time, like home or the workplace. DC Fast Charging (DCFC) is more ideal for high-traffic areas and road trip stops. DCFC might get an electric vehicle to an 80% charge in just 20 minutes to one hour.

In any case, drivers and passengers often have time to kill at the charging station. OTA updates enable a variety of informational and entertaining content. Drivers and passengers may wish to play audio and video without using battery power from their vehicles or devices. Alternatively, users might want quick information about area restaurants, lodging or entertainment.

The EVSE display might also show stats and graphics that gamify the experience. Guest books and driver networks inspire engagement. They also give drivers additional reasons to choose one charging station over another. Capturing a user base also creates opportunities to sell ads, including offers for nearby businesses.

Choose the Right Hardware

Selecting versatile hardware will give the EV charging station greater compatibility and connectivity. The hardware has to be able to support the graphical features of the GUI and run at top performance. At the same time, identifying favorable target hardware goes a long way toward controlling costs.

Getting Started with EV Charging Station Display Design

Ultimately, users have a significant say in which businesses will win market share within the growing EV charging industry. A thoughtful display can enhance the experience of using public charging stations and Level 2 home charging. For more information, visit www.altia.com.

 

Kickstart Services

Do you have a grand vision for your next GUI? Do you need to get a boost on your GUI development project?

Altia can help. We are trusted partners for companies all over the world—getting high impact GUIs to market successfully. Our Kick Start Services Program offers a great way to take a test drive with Altia’s Engineering Services Team and speed your time to market.

We offer quick-turn engagements to help you get your GUI to the finish line quickly.

Top UI / UX Trends for Medical Device Design

Posted on by Cheryl Falk

Medical device manufacturers are feeling a massive paradigm shift. Their products are being measured against smartphones, VR headsets and similar consumer technologies. As a result, medical devices must deliver a pleasant, intuitive and engaging user experience (UX). It’s not enough for medical device user interface (UI) to look sleek and advanced — every aspect of the interface must be fine-tuned to optimize usability and safety.

Current Medical Device Design Trends

With market expectations at an all-time high, medical device manufacturers are eager to meet those expectations by adding new features and improving their products. The following nine trends cover some ways medical device manufacturers can design experiences to meet and exceed rising standards.

1 – Interactive Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) allows people to experience real things in a virtual environment. Immersive, interactive, simulated environments provide excellent opportunities for training and learning. For example, a doctor can prepare for an advanced surgery using VR training exercises.

VR training is a safe way to practice procedures and get repetitions before seeing a live patient. Beyond the educational and surgical planning applications, VR can stimulate mental and physiological processes for patients. As medical device manufacturers identify additional use cases, VR is becoming more common in university research and hospital settings.

2 – Skeuomorphic Design

Improving medical device user interfaces has been a focus for years, particularly relying on recognizable visual cues to enhance the user experience. For example, a stethoscope icon or EKG readout symbol might replace the words “heart rate” on a medical device screen.

One of the primary benefits of such visual cues is that they empower language-agnostic designs. Text-based designs might require you to translate the phrase “heart rate” into numerous languages for potential users. An icon of a stethoscope or an EKG readout is clear regardless of whether the patient speaks English, Spanish or Chinese.

When conceptualizing visual design elements, medical device product teams can choose between flat and skeuomorphic designs. Flat design results in a simple, two-dimensional representation of an object. Adding skeuomorphic qualities like shadows and color variations can give elements the appearance of being shiny or existing in three dimensions.

Choosing a skeuomorphic design is one of the most prevalent healthcare UX trends today because it makes for visually appealing interfaces. However, skeuomorphic design isn’t always the answer. Flat design is still ideal in some situations:

  • For secondary and non-critical controls
  • When the device only contains one or two buttons
  • When on-screen cues help users differentiate interactive controls from static text

Skeuomorphic design touches like subtle gradients and drop shadows can give controls a more nuanced appearance. However, being too heavy-handed with it can do more harm than good to aesthetics and usability.

3 – Data Visualization

Visualizing patient data helps doctors and medical researchers gain valuable insights. Clear visualizations strip the complexity away from the data and bring the most helpful information to the forefront, allowing healthcare professionals to work more efficiently to provide fast and impactful patient care.

Instead of poring over a spreadsheet or writing database queries, patients and healthcare professionals can identify trends and outliers at a glance. Simple, straightforward data visualization also has a place in patient-facing medical devices. For example, Tandem Diabetes Care leveraged smart technology to transform their medical device UX.

4 – Interactive Chatbots

Interactive chatbots help patients access information and support with minimal friction. Providing instant answers to routine queries makes self-service easier for patients. People prefer that healthcare UI software to be interactive, and chatbots introduce a simulation of the human element. When chatbots handle monotonous and repetitive tasks, employees can focus on the work that requires human intervention.

5 – Voice Interface

Voice interfaces are becoming more useful — in your phone, at home and, now, in medical devices. Like interactive chatbots, voice interfaces provide patients and healthcare professionals with yet another way to access information quickly and conveniently.

Hands-free usability is especially valuable to patients who may not have full use of their hands. Voice interfaces give these patients the option to access application functions without help. Similarly, healthcare professionals can use voice interfaces to control technology without putting down their scalpels, needles or forceps.

6 – Customizable mHealth Apps

Mobile health apps are yet another way to increase the accessibility of information and functionality. Patients can use mHealth apps to take control of their healthcare from just about anywhere with email access. Customizable apps make the user experience more convenient, especially for patients who aren’t by a desktop or laptop all day.

mHealth apps increase patient engagement in a number of ways:

  • Sending reminders and allowing changes to appointments
  • Providing updates related to drug recommendations or other resources
  • Personalization of notifications and other features
  • Mobile tracking of health and fitness metrics
  • Offering video chat capabilities for telemedicine

Flexible customization makes mHealth apps easier to use and understand.

7 – Patient-Centric UI Design

Most of the growing healthcare UX trends share something in common. It’s all about putting patients at the center of the interface. From text size and typeface to the speed of screen scrolling, there are countless opportunities to make medical devices more pleasant and intuitive. When the device is created with the patient’s needs in mind then it’s likely that the patient will be more successful using it—less time and stress trying to figure out how to use the device, for example.

Ease of use is paramount, and not just for patients. For example, when Medtronic developed an FDA-Certified Medical device, they did so with the mindset that physicians and clinicians don’t have time to specialize in all kinds of different devices. Rather than putting the onus on healthcare providers to study the device, they created a simple touchscreen design with multi-language support.

8 – Flexible BOM Built In

Medical device OEMs have learned a lot of hard lessons during the chip shortage. When their device GUIs are limited to a single chip, production ceases when that chip becomes unavailable. This is a hard lesson that many device manufacturers have learned in recent times.

Designing flexibility into a GUI is a smart new strategy for keeping medical device production going for now and for the future. Selecting GUI design tools that support a wide range of hardware is key to that flexibility.

9 – Cloud-Based Design

Even beyond the chip shortage, the post-pandemic world creates challenges for all types of design teams and device manufacturers:

  • Dispersed teams
  • Supply chain issues
  • Shipping and labor costs
  • Disparate hardware-software stacks

All of these challenges can mean costly delays for GUI projects, so GUI teams are looking for ways to speed their development and reduce costs. Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) solutions like Altia CloudWare™ enable cloud-based design workflows to shrink or solve those problems.

Optimizing UX for Medical Devices

These nine trends are related as parts of a user-centric design philosophy. In the same way, every feature in a medical device must work together to create a cohesive user experience. Adding elements can help a product stand out and add more value for patients, but it’s also vital to implement features safely.

To see how Altia responds to medical device UI trends without increasing the risk of product failure, request your live demo.

General Motors Extends Altia Software and Engineering Services to Deploy Digital Cockpit Displays for All Electric Chevy Silverado EV

Posted on by Cheryl Falk

Altia previously announced General Motors’ use of Altia to design and deploy the massive integrated cockpit experience for the cutting-edge Cadillac LYRIQ. Today, Altia is proud to share that General Motors will continue to leverage Altia’s human-machine interface (HMI) solutions for the 2024 Chevy Silverado EV, the brand’s ground-breaking fully electric truck.

“Altia is proud of our partnership with GM’s Design Team—and we’re excited to be a part of their evolution toward an all-electric fleet,” stated Mike Juran, Altia CEO. “General Motors is leveraging Altia’s software with an inventive approach that enables extensive configurability of their cockpit graphic assets for the LYRIQ, the Silverado EV and beyond. This speaks to GM’s commitment to deliver a best-in-class experience for drivers and passengers across all its brands.”

The Ultium™ battery-powered truck will be offered with two variations of a gorgeous digital dashboard—the standard 11.0-inch infotainment touchscreen and 8.0-inch digital instrument cluster or the upgraded 17.0-inch infotainment screen and 11.0-inch instrument cluster. Both systems include rich 3D animations and driver-focused screens with intuitive access to a full range of features. These screens are highly reconfigurable to suit the preferences of driver and passenger and can be continually personalized and customized thanks to Ultifi™, GM’s end-to-end software platform that will enable over-the-air updates of software-defined features, apps and services to customers. Combined with Super Cruise1, General Motors’ hands-free driver assistance technology for compatible roads, GM’s brilliant design teams are continuing to build a legacy of innovation.

“Altia enables our design teams to deliver a consistent, top-quality look and feel for our cockpit displays that truly represent the General Motors brand,” stated Daryl Carr, Senior Manager, GM User Interface Services. “As we continue to roll out new models in our fleet of electric vehicles, Altia will be a key contributor and solution for these cutting-edge production programs.”

Altia’s HMI development software—which includes Altia Design, a WYSIWYG graphics editor, and Altia DeepScreen, an automatic code generator—is used by automotive OEMS and Tier 1 suppliers across the world to deliver high impact, memory-efficient graphical displays for instrument clusters, head-up displays, in-vehicle infotainment systems and full integrated cockpit applications. With powerful features for advanced 3D, multi-language and functional safety, along with a Professional Engineering Services Group that is available to support any and all phases of HMI development, Altia helps companies get first class HMIs to market efficiently.

1Always pay attention while driving and when using Super Cruise. Do not use a handheld device. Visit https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/super-cruise for full details.

About Altia

Altia is a software company that provides graphical user interface design and development tools that can be used from concept to final production code. Our GUI editor, Altia Design, offers development teams the capability to implement a model-based development process enabling clear team communication and accelerated user interface development. Our code generator, Altia DeepScreen, supports a vast range of low- to high-powered processors from a variety of industry-leading silicon providers. Altia generates pure C source code that is optimized to take full advantage of hardware resources. Graphics code generated by Altia is driving millions of displays worldwide – from automotive instrument clusters, HUDs and radios to thermostats, washing machines and medical devices. Our mission is to get the best automotive, medical and consumer interfaces into production in the shortest time on the lowest cost hardware.

Altia was founded in 1991. Its customers include automotive OEMs and Tier 1s like Continental Automotive, Denso, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Honda, Renault, Magneti Marelli, Nippon Seiki, Valeo, Visteon and more – plus leading consumer device manufacturers like Electrolux, Whirlpool, NordicTrack and many others.

For more information about Altia, visit www.altia.com or email [email protected].

Follow Altia on LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube.

 

Engineering Services Solution Brief

With decades of experience in real-world embedded display scenarios, Altia’s Engineering Services Team is an expert at solving difficult customer challenges—utilizing best practices to create custom software solutions, employing modern UX principles and quality testing practices.

  • Gain expertise and productivity without adding headcount
  • Obtain the best results and highest performance with your GUI projects
  • Get the most of our team’s deep technical knowledge, urgency and keen eye for quality
  • Work with local points of contact for your project – team members available worldwide
  • Fill in the gaps in your team’s expertise with Altia’s artists, UX specialists and
    embedded experts
  • Overcome tight turnaround times and performance challenges
  • Simplify your certification with our experts trained in ISO 26262, ASIL, MISRA and others

Altia Provides Major Surgical Device Maker with Turnkey Design, Saving Time and Resources

“This is what this product always wanted to look like!”

—Device Maker

For over 125 years, a division of one of the world’s largest medical products companies has been meeting the needs of surgical hospitals with innovative products. Today, assisted by the tools and services provided by Altia, it continues to lead the profession in the design and manufacture of medical devices that guide surgeons and their teams through highly complex procedures.

A Search for Solutions

Recently the manufacturer was designing an upgrade for one of its most successful camera-driven surgical visualization systems. Executing a new GUI (Graphic User Interface), however, was proving to be problematic due to the limitations of the design software recommended by a sister division. According to the senior principal software engineer on the project, the time crunch for development, combined with the difficulties using the recommended software, compelled him to try an alternative package – Altia GUI development software.

“We had licenses for Altia Design and Altia DeepScreen available to us through our company, so we gave it a try. It quickly became clear that it was superior to the software given to us by our sister division,” he said.

The device manufacturer was still constrained by engineering resources. “That’s when Altia asked, ‘How about if our services team steps in to help you meet your first design milestone?”

As Jeff Stewart, Altia’s Director of Field Application Engineering, recalled, there was a pause on the other end of the line.

“He said, ‘Really? You could just build it for me turnkey?’ I told him we could, and that’s where things went.”

Altia Earns Customer Trust

Stewart arranged a first meeting with Altia’s Professional Engineering Services Group. The customer explained that the existing monochrome GUI had been hand-coded internally and was becoming difficult to maintain. Any upgrade would have to run on the product’s existing Linux platform. Together, the two companies began working on how the new interface would function.

“From the beginning we had a good relationship,” noted Brett Stein, Vice President of Engineering Services. “The customer had its software lead, design lead and one of their senior software engineers on every call. We had our project and tech lead and probably several other engineers on each of those calls as well. When everyone collaborates on a regular basis, good things result.”

Once Altia met the first milestone, the customer recognized the value of collaborating with Altia’s team on this project – time-savings, expertise, overall quality of the interface and more. They asked Altia Services to complete the rest of the project. Backed by this team of UI experts, the customer realized they could deliver far beyond their initial plan. Therefore, they began to expand on what was initially intended to be only five screens to include fresh ideas and feature improvements not initially planned for the product.

“The final program involved nearly 50 screens in all,” Stein stated. “It included draggable, scrollable lists and menus. The GUI is designed to look and feel like a smartphone interface while running on a very low power platform. Our team is well-versed in this kind of work. In fact, this is what our company is known for in a variety of industries. So, while it was a challenge, the project progressed well.”

For any medical instrument, the UX has to be right. “The position of buttons and controls has to be intuitive,” continued Stein. “Operators can’t afford to make a wrong choice, especially with gloved fingers. The visual layout must also communicate instantly, so technicians are making the right choice every time.”

“The GUI is designed to look and feel like a smartphone interface while running on a very low power platform. Our team is well-versed in this kind of work. In fact, this is what our company is known for in a variety of industries. So, while it was a challenge, the project progressed well.”

Brett Stein, Vice President of Engineering Services

The manufacturer’s principal engineer recalled how Altia even advised on language support. “One of Altia’s services team is a native Chinese language speaker. She told us, ‘I believe some of your existing translations are wrong.’ It turned out she was correct, so we fixed them.” He continued, “That was really cool, as it’s not the norm to have that level of collaboration when we do business with other vendors.”

The trust and transparency Altia earned went a long way, in the engineer’s mind. “I have a very junior associate, straight out of college, working with me on the software. Because of the comfort level I felt with Altia, I was able to let him be the liaison with Altia’s services team. I would not have had that confidence if it were some other supplier I didn’t trust.”

On Budget, Ahead of Schedule

Despite the aggressive timeline, Altia was able to complete the revamp of the original monochrome GUI with an updated, full color and highly intuitive design. The end product was not only more advanced, but on budget and ahead of schedule. Furthermore, due to Altia’s ability to generate code for the device’s microprocessor target directly from the design using Altia DeepScreen, the GUI worked correctly the first time, without refinements.

“We showed how fast and efficient we could be. In the past the customer would outsource software and they would spend months reworking what they got back,” said Stewart. “What they got from us was a functional product.”

The customer noted that Altia allowed them to effectively extend their internal resources for this project. “Our engineering team has a lot on its plate. Altia gave us extra productivity without extra head count,” the principal engineer stated. “We were able to concentrate on the business logic while gaining a polished user experience.”

Altia’s Engineering Services Group enabled the customer to complete its GUI in half the time that its sister division was investing in a GUI for a similar product. Now, that sister division is interested in Altia as well.

“ Our engineering team has a lot on its plate. Altia gave us extra productivity without extra head count,” the principal engineer stated. “We were able to concentrate on the business logic while gaining a polished user experience.”

“I felt I was working with a team just down the hallway,” said the manufacturer’s senior principal software engineer. “This is the kind of relationship we look for. Our users are thrilled. With Altia’s help, this is what this product always wanted to look like.”

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