For this XM radio device, I developed a software prototype simultaneously with the design documentation. The prototype turned out to be useful in several ways — during design, we could try things out and make empirical decisions; it was a great artifact for client meetings; and it served as interactive documentation for the firmware developer.

The device has a two-line LCD display. A 5-way pad with a few extra buttons navigates the menu tree. This prototype separates the UI and app logic with a simple but sophisticated message-passing layer that makes it completely scriptable, allowing features such as saved states and modes that are not accessible directly through the device UI (for example, battery disconnected). It is written in java and embeds the processing graphics library for rendering.

Launch the simulator
View the marketing site

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Prototype, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.