Soundcraft's Vi Series Sound Mixers were coming up with a new model Vi3000 which had a new hardware Look and Feel with its Graphics (UI) refreshed. I was assigned the task of Redesigning all existing screens of a Vi mixing console. The challenge was that, due to hardware limitation, all screens were to be at 800x600 resolution and also becasue most of the UI functionality (in software) was not changing, I had to match the co-ordinates of every touch area to the older version. Hence there was no scope of Re-thinking the workflow, this was a pure Visual Design Process.

As these consoles would be used at outdoor and indoor locations in day light and at nights in low light, I had to maintain a good contrast which could be visible in both cases. And also, because most of the Mixing Engineers I met expressed their like for skeuomorphic UI, I have used a lot of 3D like look and feel. One of the Mixing Engineer said, "Please make a button like I want to press it as we are used to pressing a lot of buttons in older Mixers which didnt have touch panels, but real buttons". I was the only UI designer for this project and drove the project from preparing proposals to implementation.

Another BIG task in this UI Refresh project was, Vistonics, where rotating a physical knob on a small area would increase or decrease some values which would have Visual feedback. As this was not programatically done, I had to generate loads of filmstrip like images where every step of the filmstrip had 1 px increments and decrements.

Post release, this product was well received in the market not only for its enhanced technical capabilities, but also for the look and feel of the new UI.

Few more Screens