This post gives an overview of a software solution called KANZI, which specializes in creating high-end user interfaces for hardware devices with a focus on infotainment systems and HUDs for the automotive sector. Kanzi consists of two core parts, a tool for designing UI called the Kanzi Studio and an API Engine used for running the UI on a Kanzi supported hardware device.
Car meterUI
Designing UI is very fluid in Kanzi Studio, it provides a visual tool for designers to create a real-time UI very easily without the need for writing code. Anyone with prior experience with a WYSIWYG design editor can comfortably adapt to its workflow. It provides a variety of pre-built UI widgets to accelerate the design process without spending time building from scratch. Users can create a working UI with just a few clicks and the UI widgets are designer-friendly which can be easily tweaked as per design needs.
Live preview provides a real-time view on how the interface would look without the need of deploying it on a hardware device. Kanzi Studio is very adaptable for people coming from a background in Unity and Unreal Engine as there are a lot of similarities between them. A few of them are the editor view, prefabs concepts and UI components.
Programming support
Kanzi is cross-platform, thus making it easy for the developers to run the application on a wide variety of hardware having different operating systems, which include(but are not limited to) Windows and Android.
Kanzi’s workflow is very efficient and uses the MVVM (Model–view–viewmodel) architecture, which makes it easier for designers and programmers to work on UI and code without causing interruptions to each other’s work. The modular approach of Kanzi also allows reusability of the components.
While designers can make rich UIs using Kanzi Studio, the Kanzi Engine API supporting C++ programming language can be used to write the back-end logic of the application. In addition, It provides a feature called Data Sources which makes it easier to connect data with the UI in Kanzi Studio and enables to test the UI with real-time sensor or simulator data.
Kanzi supports scripting UI components via Javascript.This allows the designer to add interactivity to the components at early prototyping stages without the need for importing data sources.
Kanzi provides an intuitive UI creation tool with a variety of widgets for quick prototyping, features to integrate data sources and code back-end logic using a decoupled architecture.
It is the perfect fit for companies looking for software solutions to develop interfaces, especially for the automotive industry.
Author:
Ahmed Kamal
Would you like to know more? Contact:
Tom Hannelius
Director, Software Consulting
firstname.lastname(at)insta.fi
