HMI design and development for professional audio equipment

WesAudio decided to revamp the desktop applications (DAW plugins) for two of its devices: _PROMETHEUS and _HYPERION equalisers. The goal was to make interfaces better suited for modern digital audio workflows, which will help the company stay ahead in the market.

The previous human-machine interfaces (HMIs) had performance issues while handling complex operations due to the technological limitations of the frontend framework. Additionally, the pro audio industry is moving from analogue-looking designs towards more digital ones, and WesAudio wanted to refresh the look of the interfaces to make them more attractive and user-friendly.

Also, the implementation of applications for the two already on-the-market devices was to gather users’ feedback about the change and open the way for designing human-machine interfaces for subsequent products.

The client wanted to update the application’s interface and switch technologies while retaining all existing functionalities.

We assisted them in selecting a framework, ultimately choosing Slint – a modern, open-source user interface toolkit known for its efficiency, compactness, and portability, which also met the client’s needs in terms of development and maintenance costs, clear licensing terms, and committed technical support on the provider side.

The most significant aspect of the project on our end was designing the interface proposal that would meet all of the end-users requirements. The client provided design inspirations, enabling our UX/UI specialist to conduct further research and prepare a moodboard. During a meeting with the client, we discussed the moodboard and determined the project’s direction. The next step involved preparing the interface segments and putting elements together to show how they would work as a whole. Once the project was approved, the designer developed additional components and assembled the final look of both the _PROMETHEUS and _HYPERION interfaces.

Then, the project was handed over to a software developer, who coded the frontend in C++ using Slint tools. If needed, the developer contacted Slint directly for any support.

Our team was meeting with WesAudio twice a week to report progress and plan subsequent tasks. After developing and testing the frontend layer, we delivered the product to the client, who then independently integrated the application with hardware, with our team available for support if necessary.