In today’s world of technology, User Experience/User Interface (UX/UI) of a product is as much important as the functionality offered by the product. The UX/UI is changing fast to accommodate the needs of the customers, especially when it comes to displays. While there are many approaches like Metro Design by Microsoft, design by Apple, Google’s material design captured imaginations of many. Being used in the most shipped smartphone/tablet platform – Android, the material is accustomed to many users across geographies. And in a way, it has become a standard for UX and is even expected in Embedded Systems. In this blog, we will demonstrate a UI based on our Sparklet Embedded GUI library with a theme inspired by Material Design.
Sparklet – A Fast and Low Footprint UI
As discussed above, the visual composition of the GUI and its behavior on interaction is very important aspect of any Human Machine Interface, whether being used for Medical equipment, or for an industrial HMI, or for a Smartphone or an automotive infotainment system. Usability of the system is enhanced by a proper design of the UI so that the necessary information/data is conveyed to the user intuitively rather than explicitly. Apart of the usability, another important factor in UI design is the responsiveness. Users expect their system to be ready to interact with them as soon as the power is switched on. These require a specialized GUI Libraries along with necessary design tools.
Embien’s Sparklet is one of best options that is suited for such requirements. With small foot print – typically in few tens of KB in flash, the Sparklet library is ideally suited for low cost embedded systems. Another major advantage of Sparklet is that it is ready to accept inputs within 1-2 seconds of booting. Accompanied with Flint – an eclipse base IDE, Sparklet is the best option for fast and interactive UI design.
Material Design Inspired Embedded GUI
With increased expectation on UX/UI, Embien has themed the Sparklet Embedded GUI library with the Material Design. Below video show cases the same.
The demo depicts the Sparklet embedded GUI library on the popular Freescale Kinetis K70 MCU. Specification of the system relevant to the GUI is as follows
- ARM Cortex-M4 core + DSP
- 128 KB of SRAM
- SDRAM
- 512 KB-1 MB flash
- On-chip Graphic LCD Controller
- Capacitive Touch Input
As it can be seen, all the underlying widgets such as List view, Scroll view, Spinners, Edit box, Labels, Buttons, Menu etc. are skinned to Material Design inspired theme. Still the overall interaction is very responsive and meets the requirements of the industry.
The modular design of Sparklet makes it easy to adapt to any theme. Just as the Material Design Inspired Embedded GUI is done, users can customize the Sparklet library to suit their own theme based on the product/company preferences.
About Embien Technologies: Embien Technologies is a leading provider of embedded design services for the Semi-conductor, Industrial, Consumer and Health Care segments. Our innovative solutions like Sparklet Embedded GUI library, eStorm platforms enables customers design their product quickly and beat time-to-market challenges. We also offer design services for embedded software, hardware design, BSP/Driver porting etc. We also do specialized services for GUI design for embedded systems including porting, theming, optimizing, redesigning etc. Embien can be reached at their website.
