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5 Ways to Get Your GUI to Market QuicklyThe graphical user interface (GUI) is the face of your product. It’s where your customers meet your device—so it’s imperative that you make a great impression. In the midst of all the pressures of user experience design and product development, how can you still put the best “face” on your product on time and at the best possible cost and performance?Designers often have exciting ideas for a GUI that is attractive, convenient and adds measurable value to your product. Converting those concepts to a nished look, without compromising the initial vision, takes knowledge and the right tools. Here are ve tips that will ensure your GUI is the tremendous success your team wants.www.altia.com

Skip the hand coding and freewareWhen projects are well underway and deadlines are looming, the easy solution is to start coding using freeware or tools in a developer kit. Yet that’s where problems can start. Jumping into hand coding can short-circuit the process of creating a great user experience. Even the best coders can have diculty translating an exceptional design. If your artist’s design has dierentiating features like 3D or even augmented reality, coding can be a chore (at best). Iterations and renements can mean undoing hundreds of hours of work. Moreover, hardware targets can change due to cost or supply chain constraints, creating additional coding challenges.Skilled coders are hard to nd—and if they leave your company, expertise is lost. It’s critical to devote their talent to key business goals. To ensure the fastest and best possible code that can pivot quickly to accommodate changes, wide-ranging ecosystem partners, new ideas and unexpected market realities, consider aordable automated coding tools instead.1www.altia.com

Work from graphics built with your artists’ favorite design toolsCustomers want gorgeous, rich graphics. Designers, working in concert with your marketing team, have spent a great deal of time building a market-winning concept. Why sacrice that eort by reinventing the design in the software stage?Design integrity starts with allowing designers to create in environments they love, and it continues when those pixels are turned into real product interfaces with complete delity. Accurate translation also shortens the overall development process. With the right solutions, it’s possible for those assets to ow from concept to end product without recreating the graphics at any point. Do all you can to eliminate steps and work with original designs.2www.altia.com

Test your GUI with prototypesThe earlier you test your team’s design, the better. By testing with users, marketing specialists and key executives early in the process, you not only get buy-in but also uncover problems and opportunities before decisions are locked in.It’s imperative that you conrm the user experience using a GUI model; an interactive model will be much easier to test and validate than a written specication. With a model as your testbed, rene your UX early and retain that experience and rened design through to nal development.Finding bugs, errors and performance issues late in the process—particularly once you’ve gone to hardware—can be extremely expensive and time-consuming to correct. Early prototype testing will lessen the chance you’ll miss deadlines or blow your budget on late-in-the-game xes.3www.altia.com

Test your GUI on hardwareTesting should not be limited to usability only, even in early design when only a pre-production model is available. To make sure your design will work optimally in production, acquire reference hardware that is in the bill of material cost range, and run your GUI on it to check performance.Better still, try your GUI on dierent hardware platforms within your budget, or based on what’s most available. Make sure animations perform well and check the color depth of the various screens. Ensure the GUI ts well on the display as well.Test the entire UX upfront—not just the pieces and parts. Using the reference hardware, observe users in the use case environment to conrm that the GUI accommodates for glare, nger press, visibility and intuitive access to features.Automated code generation will allow you to make quick iterations. Keep going in pre-production until you strike the right pairing of hardware, graphics and performance.4www.altia.com

Leverage an experienced services team to take your GUI from concept to productionYou don’t have to go it alone. If you have a small team, are lacking experience or are designing a product GUI for the rst time, consulting services professionals can speed development of your project while training your team along the way.Strong external support can ll your gaps wherever they exist: UX design, artwork creation, UX testing, GUI design, hardware selection or engineering. Experienced teams can optimize your GUI for the best performance, at the lowest memory utilization, on the most cost-eective hardware. Moreover, they can help you develop repeatable processes for development, as well as highly valuable GUI content to maximize future reuse and overall project value.5www.altia.com

Altia: Software and services to help you bring beautiful, high-performence GUIs to marketAltia is a world leader in GUI design and development. We oer the software, skills and experience to ensure your GUI elevates your product to delight customers and win markets.Altia software products put you in control of the entire GUI design/build process. Altia Design, an easy-to-use GUI editor, supports all major design studio platforms including Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Maya, Sketch, Blender, 3ds Max and more, turning your artist designs into working prototypes ready for testing. Altia DeepScreen is the industry’s most versatile code generator, converting GUI models and prototypes into highly ecient, deployable graphics code. Altia platforms enable you to go to market in less than half the time of hand coding. Starting with artist design, you can go from concept to production with optimized memory consumption and best performance. And if unexpected chip supplies disrupt your assembly lines, Altia lets you pivot your code to alternative targets in the shortest possible time to keep production on track.Altia Professional Services are also available to provide support at any phase of development. Our designers are experienced in GUIs in dozens of industry verticals. Safety services, testing and validation experts can help you meet the most stringent regulations including ISO 26262, ASIL, MISRA and others.Many of the biggest global names in automotive, recreation, consumer products and healthcare use Altia tools and services to get market-winning embedded displays from pixels to production. Request your live demo today.www.altia.com