"The GUI was Adobe ActionScript. Trust me, many of us yelled very loud about how stupid an idea this was but because B-Squared own the implementation (not the architecture), they were aloud to chose whatever they wanted to meet Ford specs."
Sadly, this is how GUI design is in a lot of larger companies. The corporation hires a design firm to flesh out the UI concepts and test them on customers, so they quickly storyboard stuff up in Illustrator and Adobe Flash/Shockwave/whatever.
The concepts get tested, everyone gives a thumbs up, and then the software team gets handed a bunch of precooked assets and wireframes and told "make it run."
Then it's up to the embedded guys to make the system fly, except either a) the design firm has created graphics and animations so complex the underpowered hardware (designed and certified years ago on the last h/w cycle) can't make it go or b) the design guys took way too long in testing and focus groups so now the software guys are under the gun and instead of a rewrite/port, they port a crappy FlashLite player to the target hardware and cross their fingers.
Sadly, this is how GUI design is in a lot of larger companies. The corporation hires a design firm to flesh out the UI concepts and test them on customers, so they quickly storyboard stuff up in Illustrator and Adobe Flash/Shockwave/whatever.
The concepts get tested, everyone gives a thumbs up, and then the software team gets handed a bunch of precooked assets and wireframes and told "make it run."
Then it's up to the embedded guys to make the system fly, except either a) the design firm has created graphics and animations so complex the underpowered hardware (designed and certified years ago on the last h/w cycle) can't make it go or b) the design guys took way too long in testing and focus groups so now the software guys are under the gun and instead of a rewrite/port, they port a crappy FlashLite player to the target hardware and cross their fingers.