Appliance Design - November 2008 - (Page 31)

DISPLAYS Fig. 1. Refrigerator user-interface graphics with flat, 8-bit color created using traditional GUI development tools. Fig. 2. Refrigerator user interface graphics enhanced by a graphic artist that can go straight to production using Amulet GUI development tools. colors (256 or 65K or 16 million colors), resolution and screen size often go unanswered, resulting in a GUI that bears little or no resemblance to the original idea. The marketing team may provide a compelling GUI design to the engineering team with the expectation that the final GUI will look exactly like marketing’s vision of it. However, marketing may not realize the limitations involved with designing such a GUI with the platform that engineering has already decided upon. For example, some tools can only support 8-bit color or menu-driven designs. Most color GUI libraries on the market today still adhere to the philosophy of using high-level languages by providing application programming interfaces. The library or menu-driven approach may promote the idea of making GUI design easier, but the problem is that the design implementation still lies in the hands of the engineer, since high-level languages are required. Also, many of the libraries are heavily tied to certain operating systems, which can be costly and cumbersome in regards to design flexibility and implementation. In a typical system, the GUI is a collection of input and output objects, such as buttons and indicators, which are solely responsible for exchanging data between the user and device. For instance, in a refrigerator, the water dispensing “button” is a part of the GUI system that interacts with the central processor through a touch panel. The central processor has to handle the analog-to-digital conversion of touch panel presses and perform twodimensional pattern recognition, relaying the human gesture to the correct function. On top of all of that, the processor also has to draw the new button images to the display (pressed and non-pressed button states). The central processor is overburdened with running both the GUI and the application. Such a system requires a more powerful processor and additional memory for the complex GUI, and with the GUI and application code co-mingled, debugging becomes much more complex. Such situations would benefit greatly from an integrated hardware-software touch-screen GUI solution that fully manages the GUI input/output and talks to the central processor with just a serial line. To address such challenges, Amulet Technologies has developed a hardwaresoftware solution that empowers OEMs to render a high-end, feature-rich color GUI that can transform an otherwise ordinary product into a stylish and unique one. Amulet’s GUI solution incorporates hardware and software in a single chip, a GUI co-processor that features an LCD controller and a graphical operating system, where the GUI design is performed using graphic editing programs and HTML. This system-on-chip solution supports 24-bit color and alpha-blending, which allows the designer to maintain the photo-realistic or PC-based look that marketing wants, without the power or memory consumption required by other GUI systems. The GUI software was designed for the group best suited to create visually appealing graphical user interfaces — graphic designers. With this GUI chip, programming of the GUI is done in HTML, a visual markup language familiar to designers, instead of the more esoteric C language. Developing a GUI in HTML enables graphic designers to use What-You-See-Is-WhatYou-Get tools. They can drag and drop GUI elements exactly where they want them and see a preview of what the GUI will look like before programmers even start writing application code. This approach bridges the divide between engineering and graphic design, enabling the GUI and application code to be developed in parallel. Dividing up the workload this way not only reduces development time and speeds time to market, it results in a visually appealing and userfriendly GUI. The engineers are trying to fit as many features as they can into their product before their deadline, so taking some work out of their queue and putting it into the right hands makes the overall product that much better. This changes the challenge from making it work to making it look cool. Designers of GUIs may be given some concept art from marketing to begin with, but more likely they just have a list of spec- www.appliance www.applianceDESIGN.com applianceDESIGN November 2008 31 http://www.appliancedesign.com

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Appliance Design - November 2008 Contents Editorial Shipments/Forecasts News Watch Metals & Metal Parts Gas Technology Displays Quality & Standards New Products Design Marts Association Report: AHAM Advertiser's Index

Appliance Design - November 2008

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