Crank Software's Storyboard Suite 3.0 Speeds Time to Market for Devices with Embedded Graphical Interfaces

OTTAWA, Ontario, Jan. 8, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Crank Software today announced version 3.0 of Storyboard™ Suite, software that helps user interface (UI) designers and design engineers to quickly prototype, develop and deploy rich, animated UIs for embedded devices. Storyboard Suite 3.0 features include iOS support, animation timeline editor, OpenGL ES custom shader support, language translation manager, non-MMU device support and new image optimization tools.

With Storyboard Suite's collaborative tools, entire teams can work quickly across the product development lifecycle, from research and development to design to engineering. The new features make the process even faster.

Storyboard Suite 3.0:

• Speeds animation development with a visual presentation that makes timing easier to see and manage
• Enables users to add unique effects with OpenGL ES 2.0 custom shaders
• Allows deployment on more prototype platforms with the addition of iOS support
• Frees companies to develop graphical UIs (GUIs) on non-MMU devices via Segger EmbOS support

Designers can use Storyboard Suite to take a UI design from Photoshop to live simulation in seconds, rather than the weeks required with other GUI solutions. And, Storyboard Suite creates a simulation with UI functionality immediately in place. This unique drag-and-drop capability eliminates the tedious coding required with other solutions.

The result is a superior user experience and faster time to product reality, a key differentiator in embedded products ranging from automotive navigation and infotainment systems to medical devices and consumer electronics.

"Before Storyboard, design engineers would labor for weeks trying to retrofit coding into the design, and then often spent countless hours debugging after that," said Jason Clarke, Crank's Vice President of Sales and Marketing. "Storyboard is built for hyper-efficient collaboration. It lets designers and engineers work in parallel, which can cut months off the development schedule and thousands of dollars off the budget. We call it 'extreme acceleration'."

In addition to faster time to market, Storyboard delivers:

• High performance, with smooth animations achieving more frames per second
• Lower costs, with minimal memory usage
• Flexibility, with a single solution for developing across multiple platforms, including Android and iOS, and multiple hardware devices, from basic to highly complex

"We had three months to deliver on our technology concept car for the Consumer Electronics Show, and choosing Crank's Storyboard Suite to develop many of our UI components proved to be an excellent decision," said Andy Gryc, automotive product marketing manager at QNX Software Systems. "Our graphical design team directly imported their Photoshop mock-ups into Storyboard Suite, enabling us to experience the prototype user interface with the click of a button. Crank also integrated support for the QNX CAR™ application platform 2.0 so that those prototypes were running on the target system in little time. By taking advantage of Storyboard Suite 3.0 features like the animation timeline manager and customized shaders, our team was able to realize their vision of an exceptional in-vehicle experience."

About Crank Software Inc.

Crank Software is an innovator in embedded user interface (UI) solutions. Our products and services enable R&D teams to quickly and collaboratively develop rich animated UIs for resource-constrained embedded devices compared to traditional electronic design automation tools. Today, time is wasted in the development lifecycle because the design goes back and forth between UI designers, user experience designers, and embedded systems engineers. The Crank Storyboard Suite enables stakeholders to work in parallel. Storyboard manages the entire UI lifecycle—from UI design to simulation to being optimized for the device. It also delivers a competitive advantage because streamlining the development lifecycle enables companies to get products to market faster, with higher ROI, and lower TCO while delivering a superior customer experience. Storyboard Suite runs on Linux, the QNX^® Neutrino^® realtime operating system, Windows Embedded, Android, Segger EmbOS, Apple OS X and iOS, and major silicon vendors including TI's Sitara solutions and the Freescale i.MX family.

Visit Crank at http://www.cranksoftware.com.

QNX and QNX CAR are trademarks of QNX Software Systems Limited, which are registered trademarks and/or used in certain jurisdictions. QSS is not responsible for and assumes no obligations or liability and makes no representation, warranty, endorsement, or guarantee in relation to any aspect of any third-party products or services

Customer/Media Contact: Jason Clarke, jason@cranksoftware.com, 613-595-1999

SOURCE Crank Software