Altia Showcases GUI Solutions and Altia CloudWare™ at Embedded World 2023

Altia, a leading provider of user interface design and development software, is proud to announce its participation in Embedded World Expo 2023. This premier international trade fair and conference for embedded systems will take place in Nuremberg, Germany from March 14 to 16, 2023.

Visitors to the Altia booth will have the opportunity to see live demos of Altia graphical user interfaces (GUIs) at work with a variety of embedded ecosystem partners—including Android, Green Hills Software, Imagination Technologies, Infineon, NXP, Qualcomm, Renesas, STMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments. All are invited to visit and speak with Altia experts about how the company’s solutions can help them create visually stunning and highly functional user interfaces for their embedded systems. Around the show, Altia GUIs will be demonstrated by partners as well.

“We are excited to be a part of Embedded World Expo 2023 and to showcase our industry-leading software to the global embedded systems community,” said Jason Williamson, Altia Vice President of Marketing. “With Altia, our customers create intuitive user interfaces that set their products apart in a competitive market. Furthermore, they have the flexibility to scale their Altia GUIs from low- to high-power hardware and even switch to less expensive or more readily available hardware mid-production.”

At the expo, the Altia team will be demonstrating Altia CloudWare™, the newest product in Altia’s GUI development software lineup. This cloud-based Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) solution, is available to companies developing embedded graphical user interfaces for production devices. CloudWare™ allows GUI developers to remotely access and pair Altia’s software with popular embedded hardware to create a test drive experience for their GUI from anywhere in the world.

Visitors to the Embedded World 2023 parallel conferences are invited to learn more about Altia CloudWare™ in presentations by Jeff Stewart, Altia Director of Global Sales Engineering, at Electronic Displays 2023 Conference on Wednesday, March 15 at 2:20 PM and Thursday, March 16 at Embedded World 2023 Conference at 5:00 PM.

Find Altia in Hall 4, Booth 4-201 at the Embedded World Expo 2023. Attendees are encouraged to schedule a meeting at the show or visit Altia’s booth to learn more about the company’s products and services and to see live demos of its software in action.

Altia Launches CloudWare™ to Enable Simplified, Faster Embedded GUI Development

Altia CloudWare™, a cloud-based Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) solution, is now available to all companies developing embedded graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for production devices. The newest product in Altia’s GUI development software suite, CloudWare™ allows GUI developers to remotely access and pair Altia’s graphical user interface software with popular embedded hardware to create a test drive experience for their GUI from anywhere in the world.

Officially launched at CES 2023 and previewed prior to the show with key partners and customers, Altia CloudWare™ is already being recognized as a game-changing solution for improved collaboration, fast access to production hardware and simplified hardware testing to find the right-sized hardware for a GUI project.

“At Altia, we work with companies developing graphical displays for production and we learn a lot about the challenges they have experienced in previous projects. It’s our mission is to make embedded GUIs easy, so we created CloudWare™ to simplify benchmarking, testing and running GUI designs on any supported hardware from anywhere in the world,” stated Mike Juran, Altia CEO. “With the prevalence of distributed teams, this new tool also enables immediate collaboration with a unified hardware-software stack. GUI teams will turn months of collaboration time into minutes with CloudWare™.”

“This hardware-in-the-cloud solution offered by Altia will enable our customers to rapidly evaluate NXP® Semiconductors’ high-performance MCUs and MPUs and make it easy for them to choose from the wide range of NXP devices available for their GUI-based products,” said Jeff Steinheider, Vice President and General Manager, Industrial Edge, NXP. “The production-proven pairing of Altia GUI software with i.MX 8QuadMax in the cloud is a major advance in HMI development. With coming support for i.MX RT1170 and i.MX 93 families, our customers will be able to quickly and easily explore our broad portfolio to find an optimal solution for their needs.”

“Altia CloudWare™ is more than just a product we’re offering to customers. As a global company, we have engineers all over the world who are actively using this tool for our own demo and product development,” stated Mike Morgan, Altia Director of Product Delivery. “Not only has CloudWare™ enabled us to troubleshoot our GUI development in real time, but it makes our engineering team members even more productive and successful. We’re collaborating more effectively and with greater certainty because we are developing and testing for the exact same hardware.”

Altia CloudWare™ is now available. To request your demo, visit www.altia.com/cloudware.

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 automotivemedical 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 LinkedInTwitter and YouTube.

Altia Solves GUI Development Challenges with New Hardware-in-the-Cloud Solution

Altia is proud to announce Altia CloudWare™, a cloud-based Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) solution that allows graphical user interface (GUI) developers to pair Altia’s production-proven graphical user interface software with popular embedded hardware to create a test drive experience for their GUI from anywhere in the world. Altia will showcase this new product at CES 2023 – January 5-8 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“Altia’s real-world understanding of the challenges of embedded system setup, configuration and validation inspired the development of Altia CloudWare™,” stated Michael Hill, Altia Vice President of Engineering. “We wanted to give our users the ability to rapidly access embedded systems as if they are sitting on their own desks—without the hassle associated with hardware and software management. We have achieved this with CloudWare™.”

What challenges does Altia CloudWare™ solve? As embedded GUI developers face incredibly long lead times for test hardware, Altia CloudWare™ enables access to test hardware in minutes. With multiple platforms available, GUI teams can pair their GUIs with the hardware of their choice to benchmark and test their project for best performance. Distributed GUI team members work with the same hardware-software stack—eliminating risk of disparate software versioning, configuration or compiler installation. Additionally, because the hardware is in the cloud, there is no loss of productivity while teams wait for test hardware to manufacture and ship. Instead, teams can begin development now with their selected CloudWare™ platform. Altia CloudWare™ enables GUI design teams to meet their product development schedules so that, when production hardware is available, their GUI will be ready to deploy.

The Altia team will demonstrate Altia CloudWare™ at their Renaissance Hotel exhibitor suite at CES 2023. CES attendees interested in a demo of Altia CloudWare™ can request a meeting with Altia at www.altia.com/ces. Not attending CES? Sign up to see CloudWare™ on our website.

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 automotivemedical 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 LinkedInTwitter and YouTube.

 

Altia Workflow | From Pixels to Production Hardware

Designed into over 100 million devices, companies all over the world trust Altia to get their best-looking, best-performing GUIs to market. 

There are many reasons why Altia is GUI tool of choice for developers of all sorts of devices—automotive, medical, consumer and more. One of the top reasons is our streamlined workflow. Altia’s toolchain not only reduces the overall time to market with new GUI projects, but our software also gives companies the capability to turn their artist’s beautiful 2D and 3D artwork into a working GUI model and then deliver that same model all the way to production hardware.

Want to see how simple developing and deploying GUIs with Altia can be? Check out our latest video which shows the journey from graphics in Photoshop through to production hardware.

Would you like to meet with our GUI experts to discuss your next embedded display project and learn more about how Altia will help you get your product to market quickly? We invite you to schedule a demo with us today!

Meet Altia Design 13.3—Live Webinar

How do you create high impact GUIs even faster? Altia’s Director of Product Marketing, Jeff Urkevich, and Tim Day, Altia Design Product Manager, will show you how with a live webinar featuring Altia Design 13.3, the latest release of our GUI editor.

All are invited to join us on Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 10 AM Eastern.

In this presentation, we will offer a first look at the top five new features in Altia Design 13.3.

  • Programmable Scene Node
  • Differential 3D Import
  • Composite Timelines
  • Blend Animations
  • Responsive Layout

Altia Design 13.3 is rich with in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) design power as well as updates to make our customers’ experience with Altia easier and more pleasing than ever before. We can’t wait to show you Altia Design 13.3 in action!

(Are you unable to join us? Make sure to sign up anyway! We’ll send you a recording after the live event.)

 

 

Altia Releases Altia Design 13.3

Altia, an international leader in GUI design and development tools, today announced the release of Altia Design 13.3, the company’s flagship editing suite for the creation of embedded graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

The centerpiece of the Altia tool suite, Altia Design, allows GUI designers to turn static digital graphics into fully functional GUI prototypes—preparing graphics for code generation with Altia DeepScreen. This tool chain is used by professionals around the world in automotive, medical, industrial and consumer goods applications to get artists’ assets from third party design tools like Adobe Photoshop, Sketch, Maya and more onto production hardware.

Altia Design 13.3 takes GUI development to the next level with powerful new features, like:

  • Programmable Scene Node, which allows developers to inject their own 3D content into a 3D scene; ideal for integration of mapping applications and ADAS
  • Differential 3D Import, which gives users the capability to replace geometry in the scene without replacing or deleting any of the customization/animation already done in Altia
  • Composite Timelines, which lets users create parent and child timelines – letting users control the sequence of child timelines by the parent
  • Blend Animations, which allows for seamless transition between two complex, independent animations
  • Responsive Layout, which allows developers to set rules for objects and design a GUI once to accommodate for a variety of screen sizes and resolutions

Also included in Altia Design 13.3 are important font module updates as well as enhancements for workflow, user interface and user experience.

“As embedded displays become increasingly pervasive across products in all industries, the need to inform and engage our devices users with 3D graphics and sophisticated animations is becoming an unspoken requirement,” noted Jeff Urkevich, Director of Product Marketing for Altia. “Altia Design 13.3 is packed with excellent features to empower our customers to design these graphics with ease.”

“The features and improvements in Altia Design 13.3 enable some very exciting opportunities for our customers’ next generation GUIs,” added Tim Day, Altia Product Manager. “With this release, we’ve added key in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) design power as well as updates to make our customers’ experience with Altia easier and more pleasing. As an Altia user myself, I am really excited about Version 13.3.”

Altia Design 13.3 is immediately available. Altia customers interested in upgrading to Version 13.3 should email their local FAE team or contact [email protected]. Designers and product developers interested in bringing their next generation GUIs to life with Altia can request a demo of Altia Design 13.3 today.

About Altia

Altia is a software company that provides graphical user interface design and development tools that can be used from concept to final product code. Our GUI editor, Altia Design, offers development teams the capability to implement a model-based development process for clear 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 healthcare monitors. Our mission is to get the
best automotivemedical 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 LinkedInTwitter and YouTube.

See 9-Slice Object in Action

Altia Design now includes the 9-Slice Object—a part of the Altia Design model library. The 9-Slice Object allows for smart scaling of GUI elements, preserving the integrity of images when resized.

The 9-Slice Object is a big timesaver. Designers can create graphics with 9-slice behavior in just seconds. Plus, by they only need to create a single graphic for a resizable widget. Since there are fewer images that need to be updated when changes are needed, designers also save time on changes. They also save memory, since fewer images in the GUI model means less memory consumed on hardware.

Developers can apply this new feature to GUI elements like buttons, sliders, scroll bars, text inputs, progress bars and background graphics.

Check out 9-Slice Object in action in this Altia Design feature video.

Interested in upgrading to the latest release of Altia Design, which includes 9-Slice Object and many more powerful features? Contact your local FAE or email [email protected].

Design Techniques for Optimizing Graphical User Interfaces for Embedded Devices

Designing high-quality graphical user interfaces (GUI) for devices with hardware constraints can be difficult. But this article demonstrates some ways to maximize design efficiency to make it easier. More efficient GUIs use less memory, CPU and GPU power when handling moving parts and animation, and allow the designer more room to be creative with their designs, instead of worrying about their hardware constraints.

Design with common elements

The example below shows a simple menu screen with some common elements:

  • Each ICON_X is a button that would change the GUI to a different colored screen.
  • The HOME button returns the GUI to the home screen.
  • The HOURS:MINUTES:SECONDS element remains in the upper right corner for all screens.
  • The ICON_X buttons and HOME button remain in the same location regardless of which ICON_X buttons selected.

Developer blog series_1

If a GUI developer were to design a menu layout by copying and pasting the “TimeAndIconBanner” element (the top bar displaying HOURS:MINUTES:SECONDS, and the bottom bar displaying the Icon Buttons) for each of the screens in this GUI, the result is several duplicate objects in the GUI model. In the image below, each Card in the Deck Object that makes up the “IconScreens” contains the same TimeAndIconBanner element.

The TimeAndIconBanner element is a part of each individual screen under IconScreens, and the multiple instances of TimeAndIconBanner require a redraw of that element every time the screen is changed, resulting in unnecessary RAM and CPU usage.

To optimize this design and others like it, designers should isolate the common elements, TimeAndIconBanner in this case, and move them to a single instance one level up, as shown below.

Only one TimeAndIconBanner element now lives at the same level as IconScreens. This hierarchy illustrates the most efficient arrangement of design components, resulting in a corresponding change in the z-order of these groups within Altia Design, meaning that the highest level TimeAndIconBanner group is shown above the lower IconScreens group on the display.

Design with moving parts

Consider an animated speedometer. If the GUI is designed such that the entire screen is redrawn, instead of just the needle, more memory will be required for this GUI. Maintaining the static background image and animating only the needle on top creates the most efficient and memory-saving design. Another place to squeeze out some extra performance can be in reducing your fps. Some animations may not require the hardware’s maximum frame rate to achieve a satisfactory smoothness, and with Altia Design its simple to experiment and find a lower fps that works in your design.

Simple spedometer

If you would like to learn more about how Altia can help you optimize your GUIs to deliver the best performance using the least memory and power, we invite you to schedule a demo with a member of our expert GUI team today.

 

Types of User Interfaces: Modern UI Design

As humans, we spend most of our day interacting with user interfaces (UIs). The primary interface we use on a daily basis, maybe more like every few minutes: our phones. Smart phones and their touchscreen interfaces have informed the way we expect other devices to work. We have a new set of default expectations and it’s easy to be disappointed if the UI is not easy to use.

In a past blog post, Exploring the UI Universe: Different Types of UI, we defined UI and identified four common types of user interfaces. While that content remains true, new technology comes with new categories and considerations. In this article, we’re going to share updated types of UI that fall under the umbrellas of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), physical user interfaces and hybrid models.

Our end-users expect UIs to be intuitive and efficient. As engineers or designers, our UI needs to work for the end-user, no matter the device. When we are designing user interfaces, we also need to design for user experience (UX). UI informs UX and in turn, UX informs UI. We want the user to actually enjoy using the product. Not only does the UI need to look good, but the interaction needs to make the end-user feel productive and successful.

Different types of user interfaces (UI)

Touch UI

Touch screens have overtaken thousands, if not millions of products and UIs at this point. However, the UX has become essential for these user interfaces. For nurses and medical professionals, touch screens have started to replace buttons and knobs.

hand touching medical device touchscreen

Most ventilator user interfaces are now constructed with touch screens, with highly thought-out and rigorously tested safety modes. For example, placing critical buttons on the bottom of the screen for quick accessibility, asking twice to confirm a command or requiring the user to hold down a button on the screen to execute that command.

Not only are the actual touch screen buttons important, but colors are even more critical in medical situations. Nurses and doctors need to quickly look at a medical device screen and recognize what is going on based on color. Blood pressure is red, oxygen saturation is blue and when a patient takes a breath, it displays in green. These screens need to be able to convey important information at a glance so the user can react quickly by pressing the correct command.

Focus-based UI

When we think of focus-based UIs, a computer screen typically comes to mind. The user will use a mouse or cursor to interact with the product and its screen. The cursor shows the user the current position for the user interaction, allowing for the user to make an action and the device will respond from that input.

No matter the device, the cursor or pointer need to be large enough to be seen—no squinting required. It also needs to contrast the background on the various screens so it doesn’t get lost to the naked eye. What we’re seeing more and more with focus-based interfaces is a hybrid of a cursor with touch, so that the user can user their finger to move the cursor or pointer.

2D and 3D UIs

In the 2D world of a digital display, 3D user interfaces add additional context and detail. For example, in a high-end automotive cluster, the 3D status car will inform the driver about which tire has low pressure or which door is still open, truly optimizing ease and efficiency. Altia allows developers to integrate 2D and 3D graphics for custom embedded displays.

For the medical industry, while ultrasounds are still in 2D, a 3D view of a patient will inform a doctor where to place sensors or see an organ from a different vantage point. Cardiovascular surgeons can utilize 3D technology not only to build 3D hearts, but to also see internal views of the heart and potential defects—ultimately saving lives with the addition of a visual UI advancement.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

We are seeing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology rapidly evolve and become mainstream out of necessity, especially in educational settings and healthcare. While these terms are super trendy and usually grouped together, it’s important to know how AR and VR are different. AR enhances what you see in real life with additional information and graphics while VR creates a different digital environment that completely replaces what the user is seeing as their ‘real-world’.

Healthcare is going to become more visual, and GUIs will make that happen. From learning situations to life-saving surgeries, AR and VR can be implemented to elevate the experience. 

Surgeries are already happening laparoscopically with the doctor sitting at a desk with a screen—AR would enhance not only the UX, but also the visibility. All the while, medical devices need to be safe, accurate and easy to use in critical situations. Not only will AR/VR be valuable for medical devices, they will also be critical in head-up displays in cars, trucks, SUVs and even off-highway vehicles.

Voice UI

Voice interfaces allow the user to interact with a product through speech or verbal commands. “Hey Siri” and “Hey Alexa” have become well-known phrases for most people, even if they don’t own one of these virtual assistants. Rattling off a grocery list, requesting a new song, asking for reminders—all user interactions based on voice and executed when the need is top of mind.

Most commonly, we see voice interfaces as both graphical and physical UIs due to the common use of a teleprompter UI to give the user feedback and prompts. A voice interface is a true result of UX/UI design because it needs to hear and understand the voice command then complete the action. We’re seeing voice UX more than ever before and there’s no stopping now.

Haptics and Ultrahaptics

Haptics are technologies that create an experience that the user can physically feel by engaging the sense of touch—think buzzing or vibration when you enter your password incorrectly or your fingerprint doesn’t land just right to unlock your device. Haptics provide the user with a clear sense of success or failure during the interaction.

For the automotive industry, haptics can allow for increased engagement with the vehicle without sacrificing safety. If the driver can feel a notification and react quickly (even with voice or gestures), rather than look away from the road, everyone is safer all around. Haptics will allow your user to engage with your product in a way they can feel, rather than see.

Ultrahaptics allows for interactions with objects mid-air using ultrasound that reflects air pressure waves off a user’s hand. Products with ultrahaptic UIs create the illusion that end-users are actually feeling objects mid-air and allowing them to interact with an object on a screen.

3D car in automotive cluster

Hybrid models

What you’ll start seeing more and more are hybrid user interface that including a combination of modalities and interactions. While voice can work when a user is alone and somewhere quiet, gesture or touch interfaces are more convenient and less intrusive in a public setting. Moreover, on a construction site, the user may not be able to utilize voice, but they can touch a screen to flip through the digital construction blueprints. For the medical industry, if a medical professional is wearing gloves, gesture-based or voice user interfaces can be a better option.

Not only can graphical interfaces be easy to use and intuitive, but these types of interfaces—especially touch and haptic UIs—are also what end-user expect. Hybrid UIs that include touch and 3D features can be product differentiators that can not only impress your end-user, but ultimately facilitate an incredible user experience.

Conclusion

Woman with touch screen phone

Ultimately, you want to strike a balance between innovation and function. While the idea of flashy and highly detailed graphics on your UI sound great in a brainstorm session, sometimes the simpler, the better. You want to design a user interface that allows an end-user to intuitively get the job done, whether that’s conducting a complicated medical procedure or starting a washing machine.

The future of UI is incredibly exciting. Innovations that turn common surfaces, like an automotive armrest into a UI control are currently in the works. Technologies like conductive thread, mechatronics and smart materials will allow companies developing UIs to create futuristic user experiences.

With Altia’s model-based development approach, you gain the power to create a custom user interface model in Altia Design, our GUI editor. These models enable clear communication, fast feedback and iterations for your UI design. Altia’s software allows for testing with users in real-life use cases throughout your development process—both in a runtime environment and on test hardware—to ensure that your UI’s UX meets your end-users’ expectations for performance, features and ease of use. Once your GUI is perfected, Altia DeepScreen generates optimized, certifiable C code for your production hardware so that you get your best UX from concept to production quickly, efficiently and successfully.

From graphic design optimized for UX to prototypes and testing, we can do it all. Contact us for a free demo today!

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