Crank™ Storyboard™ Designer enables user interface (UI) designers to easily prototype the look and feel of a product, and then move the prototype directly to the embedded target for deployment. UI designers maintain full control over the UI and user experience (UX) without having to perform a hand off to an embedded systems engineer for implementation.
Traditionally UI development is serialized but Storyboard Designer uses a parallel approach where multiple team members can collaborate and work seamlessly together throughout the entire product development cycle.
Using this approach the graphic designer can create the initial UI and import those images into Storyboard Designer. From there the embedded developer can start immediately on attaching actions and events to those imported files. The graphics artist can continue evolving the UI at the same time as the embedded engineer is adding complexity to the underlying software foundation of the product. They can stay in sync by using the Collaboration view within Storyboard Designer and compare changes and merge the individual components they require.
Storyboard Designer is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux allowing all development team members to work in an environment they are comfortable and familiar with. This speeds up time to market as there is no learning curve for the team members moving to a new OS platform.
Report generation will export a summary, in PDF or HTML, on all the actions and events associated with the controls, layers, screens etc. of your application. This is very useful for the product or project manager to quickly review and make sure product requirements are moving ahead as planned.
Getting a product out to market on time and on budget is no easy feat. Storyboard Designer helps in accomplishing that task by enabling a rapid development environment.
Graphic Designers can easily import Adobe Photoshop PSD files with Storyboard Designer. Once the PSD file is imported into Storyboard Designer the embedded engineer can quickly start applying actions and events to controls of the application.
Storyboard Designer provides a WYSIWYG environment. This gives the engineer a real time display of what the final product will look like. Adding and removing controls, layers, screens, etc. happens in real time. There is no need to make a change and then recompile to see what the UI will look like.
Storyboard Designer includes a simulator enabling the engineer to test the application in real time. Not only does the engineer automatically see the visual changes to the application in Storyboard Designer but they can also run the simulator to see the application function in real time. The engineer can click on buttons, enter text, etc. and get a feel for how the application with perform before exporting to the target device.
Prototyping the application is just a matter of exporting the data bundle to the target platform. There is no code to compile with Storyboard Designer. The application is converted to a data bundle that the Storyboard Engine interprets.
Storyboard Designer is laid out in such a way that the embedded engineer can see all the information associated with their application. The engineer can look at configuration details from a high level perspective or can get more granularities with regards to property setting values and function calls associated with events and actions.
A scripting debugger is included with Storyboard Designer. It provides the engineer with the ability to dive deep into their scripts to see what might be taking place within the applications’ underlying functions.
Storyboard Designer is available to be hosted on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Each of those development environments includes a simulator. For engineers deploying their final product on a win32 x86, macosx x86 sdl, or linux x86 sdl system; they are simulating with the very same runtime that would be on their final product.
Last minute changes can sometimes be devastating to any product just before release. Storyboard Designer minimizes that risk by means of the Collaboration view. Embedded engineers can see exactly what and where changes have been made; making it very easy to remove any last minute modifications.
Do you have questions? We enjoy talking tech. Please call us at +1.613.595.1999. Or email us at info@cranksoftware.com.