A Bridge (of the Enterprise) Too Far

User interface design has to balance a number of competing goals, mainly:

• Functionality
• Responsiveness
• Aesthetics

That was  the case with this project for an in-vehicle data collection system. The interface was a touch screen that requires input from the same person driving the vehicle. It was very important that the interface be simple and easy to understand and fast to work with, to keep the driver's eyes on the road.

We started with a typical LabVIEW interface. It worked, but it was a bit boring. It also suffered from being difficult to see. The gray background did not provide much contrast while day driving.

Partly as a search for contrast, and partially because of being huge Star Trek fans, we made a version with the LCARS interface. It has great contrast and it looks really cool. There were some problems, though. The font was hard to read, and some of the graphic elements are more decorative, which just wasted valuable screen real estate.

We took the best elements of LCARS and toned it down a bit to come up with a very functional high-contrast GUI that works great for the drivers.