The Battle for the Dashboard

As the pace of technological innovation within the automotive sector continues to  increase, more and more of the analogue interior is becoming the new digital frontier. Apple hopes CarPlay will provide a common visual language to streamline the process.

Last week, the focus was all on Apple's WWDC keynote announcements in San Francisco. They delivered a wide range of software solutions, arming iOS developers with the next generation of digital tools and laying the groundwork for a raft of exciting hardware products in the run up to the holiday season.

Headlines were grabbed by enhanced Photos, audio Messages, smart Keyboards, Family Sharing, iCloud Drive, HealthKit, HomeKit and an entirely new programming language – Swift.

At WWDC 2013, Apple announced its intention to bring iOS to the car, on more than just your phone screen and earlier this year the first serious brand partners were revealed...

I have worked with the automotive industry for nearly 15 years and had much more than a passing interest in cars my whole life. However, I’ve never been a big fan of motoring classics unless influencing contemporary curves, so technological developments inside the car offer a fascinating design and development challenge. How do we bring the screen experience from our pockets to the the dashboard?

On the surface, this would seem a relatively simple step for Apple. iOS7 and iOS8 offer a flat graphic simplicity that lends itself to quick actions accessed at a glance, or effective voice commands for key features. Just the kind of interaction you want when 99% of your attention should be on the road ahead.

Apple’s hardware always follows a beautiful, streamlined aesthetic, free from unnecessary adornments and flourishes. Thanks to last year’s iOS7 overhaul, the software now compliments this perfectly.

The automotive market is a very different animal. Whilst brands may retain a level of consistency and share common components (ie VW Group or GM), they all assume different characters.

Consistency of digital brand: BMW UI from key to smartphone to smartwatch.

The BMW family screen UI is probably the best example of a diverse range, all reaching for the best on-screen graphics whilst adopting wildly different personalities. The MINI colour palette, iconography and graphics take on a cheeky, playful persona. Rolls Royce provides the polar opposite with layered glass-like panels to match the physical buttons surrounding the main screen. BMW’s conventional range uses a subtle colour palette to identify key functions (Audio, Sat Nav, Phone, etc) and gentle layering of content, with occasional light flares and reflective buttons. The new ‘i’ EV range range takes this a step further with a more adventurous palette and deeper layering for something that wouldn’t look out of place on the bridge of the USS Enterprise... but in a good way.

Graphic vs skeuomorphic, flat vs layered, corporate fonts, colour palettes and screen ratios. These are all graphic elements to take into consideration and there is undoubtedly a fine creative balancing act involved to combine existing branding and features with Apple’s CarPlay interface.

I’ve dwelt on the potential pitfalls but many automotive manufacturers are still offering drivers a pretty poor on-screen experience. Although the latest Land Rover Discovery Vision concept has a full set of screens displaying content that looks as if it could have emerged from Apple’s own creative studio, Tesla offers a comparatively poor graphic interface within the largest digital real estate on the market. The Model S UI is the perfect candidate for a full CarPlay-compatible makeover – especially as Tesla is a shoe-in for Apple acquisition and Elon Musk being Steve Jobs’ true successor-in-waiting.

I digress. Currently, CarPlay is only supporting 3rd party audio apps such as Beats (naturally) and Spotify music streaming services. Future app integration will build on this, with huge potential for voice commands and audio interaction. The focus will always remain on products that don’t distract the driver and offer the continuation of relevant services from phone to car. There’s little point offering everything in the car, in much the same way the compass app is pretty pointless on a smart TV.

Where CarPlay comes into its own is the familiarity through shared interfaces and content. The continuation of basic actions is essential, such as track syncing if started outside the car, then continued once driving. Also, the ability to share mapping data is genuinely useful (this wouldn't have been an option with Apple Maps 1.0). Navigate to a location in your car, then park and seamlessly continue on foot – that’s useful.

So what does the future hold for CarPlay? Apps are dead, right? No, this isn’t about using the internet in your car to replace apps.

Consider the following...

• Mapping data to provide info regarding payment services for parking, admission or valeting
• PassBook electronic tickets issued upon payment to display in-dash and on phone
• Biometric integration – Apple's Health app linked to wearable tech to monitor heart rate and consciousness levels for safety at the wheel
• HUD and gesture recognition – there’s a thought for future generations of iPhone interaction.

CarPlay offers automotive manufacturers the opportunity to streamline their UI and make consumers‘ lives simpler through familiarity. Apple has a chance to lock down another sector into the world of iOS. It’s not a bad place to be.

A version of this article originally appeared in iCreate issue 134

It’s Hip to be Square, but spectacular to be rectangular [updated]

As camera technology changes and social channels multiply, we find ourselves with increasing opportunities to share a visual record of our lives with the wider world. The one constant is the subject matter and how we think about its creative execution. Or is it?

I rarely feel the need to update my blog entries or online articles as they stand as reflections of the moment and passing observations. Occasionally, a product or service upgrade prompts a change of information or time spent with the same requires some additional thought based on a long term review.

I originally wrote the article below as a non-Instagram user, which with hindsight seems a little unfair and ill-informed. All my original opinions still stand regarding composition and over-filtering of images but I'm now sleeping with the enemy… and it's not as bad as it sounds.

The main reason I chose to make the jump was the ability to share. I wanted to broadcast my photography, travels and life experiences through yet another social channel – square or not. I managed to upload 2 years worth of carefully selected 'square-friendly' photos and I'm now up to date.

The photos and videos featured on my other social channels are merely the tip of the creative iceberg. I don't post direct if they won't preview inline so all the rest now lurk on my @activrightbrain Instagram feed.

Here's the original article...

I’m going to be controversial here... I don’t like Instagram. I’m not rebelling against filtered photos or tenuous titling, rather it saddens me that in the quest for the square crop, we’re losing the art of composition.

What do I mean by this? Well, Instagram’s square format is perfect for an avatar but when Twitter’s preview image and both Twitter and Facebook’s header are landscape and Nelson’s Column, the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower all deserve a format to match their stature, square doesn’t quite cut it.

If you want an image with four sides of equal length, it should be because you chose that crop, not because it was the only option available. My header image (above) certainly wouldn't have worked on Instagram!

With a full landscape format, we understand the distance jumped and tell a story beyond the captured moment.

The smartphone and tablet revolution has given us more than digital independence or the office in our pocket, it has equipped us with a still and video camera so we’re always ready to capture the moment. Here’s the thing, the screen is a rectangle with a ratio of 4:3 to 16:9 and beyond. It seems a shame not to use the digital real estate.

A square crop would have forced us too far from the boy on the train or removed the focus of his attention – the castle.

A square format works for video platforms such as Vine (and Instagram) as you can pan horizontally and vertically to capture the full height of a subject or the panoramic vision.

However, in a rectangular viewfinder it’s still the general rule that portrait is better for... portraits and landscape is better for... landscapes. If you really want to be a rebel (or just add impact), try it the other way around.

The landscape format illustrates the sheer scale of the beach without overpowering the surfers with too much sand and sky.

I can’t deny I have an interesting life and I love having the ability to capture every relevant second on my own terms. To prove the point, I recently sold all my DSLR kit as this represented hardware dictating the terms. There were fewer and fewer opportunities for me to carry all the equipment with me yet my phone travels everywhere I go, especially with a waterproof case. The phone won, the DSLR lost.

Some images just deserve a portrait format. Without it, they're topped and tailed or given too much either side.

The upside of Instagram’s popularity is the fact that many more people are taking and sharing great photos, I just wish we weren’t settling for a single format when we’ve had centuries of painting, drawing and photography to show us that life’s more fun when you’re not trying to be square.

Back to The Drawing Board

If my life had taken a few different turns, I might still be painting portraits of the gifted and famous (not always mutually exclusive) instead of playing with gadgets, waving my arms around in front of an audience and helping to design the future. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be writing this.

It doesn’t hurt to imagine an alternate reality from time to time so I thought I’d consider what I’d be doing if those two worlds had collided. If I’d turned right instead of left and continued on my path to artistic infamy, yet maintained a healthy interest in all things digital. More about my past creative endeavours in Face Time.

Where does one start? I didn’t want this to be a long drawn-out process so I’m not writing full technical reviews of each device. This is about the artistic and emotional rollercoaster, not screen resolution – you can follow the links for more info!

My plan was to test a variety of hardware, from the smallest and simplest to the largest and most complex. Each had one thing in common – a stylus of some kind, but they all use different methods to communicate with the surface or screen.

All but one device is manufactured by the industry-leader, Wacom. First-up is the Inkling £84.95.

A small black box clips to the top edge of a sheet of paper or pad then monitors the movements of a hybrid stylus/ink pen as you draw on the surface.

In theory, this sounds like a superb way to retain a natural drawing style whilst digitising the results. In practice, it’s actually quite remarkable. Once your sketch is complete, you plug the black box into your computer via a USB cable and download the results to the supplied software. This displays your artwork in staggering detail with the option to export as bitmap or vector files. You can even save an animated movie of your illustration in progress!

I love the freedom and the lack of compromise when drawing. I’d like to see a wireless transfer or real-time screen rendering option at some stage but for the relatively cheap entry point, this is a superb product for preliminary sketches.

Jot Script Evernote Edition £49.95 / $74.95 (plus an iPad!)

Making use of the iPad’s Retina screen and a fine-tipped bluetooth-connected pen seems the perfect combination. It so nearly is, but there’s a fraction of lag evident when using apps such as 53’s Paper (not Facebook’s!), Procreate or Evernote’s own Penultimate. The lag can be overcome by using your finger instead of the stylus, but I’ve never been big on finger painting and the pen’s lag just highlights the shortcomings of this compared to ‘real’ art materials.

Wacom Bamboo (now Intuos Pen & Touch £169.99 / $199)

I wanted to refresh my memory of working with a basic tablet and Wacom’s Bamboo was a cool looking device, with bright colours, interesting textures and a material label at one end to hold the stylus when not in use. My view remains unchanged – I’m still not a fan of the disconnected pen and screen. It has always felt unnatural to me when the result of your input is displayed so far away from the tip of the stylus, despite the fact that I’m perfectly comfortable with a mouse in similar circumstances.

Unnatural or not, here's one I made earlier...

I started this process a while ago and the Bamboo has since been replaced by the Intuos range, a more sober look but it sits comfortably with Apple’s current visual approach to hardware design.

Wacom Cintiq 24HD £2,499.99 / $2,999

Wow. This was my reaction before I even manhandled the Cintiq onto my desk. This really is the big daddy of the digital art world, an enormous 24” multitouch drawing board where the image you create is rendered directly under the stylus, just like a real drawing board or easel.

The large drawing area immediately encouraged me to (quite literally) think big, to take large unrestricted strokes and adopt a freedom of creative expression that required less image zooming than other devices. It all feels right and I’m glad I saved this beast until last as it finally convinced me to plunge back into the art world.

I took my alter-ego as inspiration and created a quick illustration of Apptain America, using a wide range of brushes and materials. Having stepped away from my portraiture for nearly two decades I admit to being tempted to pick up where I left off thanks to the Cintiq (and the Inkling). Wacom offers a smaller mobile version but I’m not interested as they’ve been hobbled by Windows and Android operating systems – they’re not allowed to use Apple’s. I’m a creative so It’s Cupertino kit all the way.

So, do I miss the artistic life I rejected 20 years ago? I miss being able to offer a simple answer to the question “what do you do?” I’m still part of the team that creates amazing things but I’m less ‘hands-on’ than I ever have been. It makes me sad that my wife and children aren’t impressed by what I do and it doesn’t make them proud.

I’d like to change that, so maybe I’ll find more time to sketch and paint in a digital world. I have a hunger to bring faces to life again so I’ll start making my hit list to add to my previous scalps, whoever they may be...

The 2014 Shorty Awards: The Short Story

Every year I take advantage of my loyal Twitter followers – a mixture of friends, colleagues, clients, industry peers and generally a bunch of great people, then bombard you all with requests for votes in the Shorty Awards. This year, it all got too much for Apptain America...

If you've never heard of the Shorty Awards (and this is possible), they were set up to recognise excellence in social media by allowing leading Twitterati to canvas for votes... and ultimately acclaim. This resulted in an unfortunate number of award wins for Justin Bieber and One Direction and this annoys me every year when they finish ahead of me in the Design, Technology and Apps categories. I'd love to turn this around in 2014 so please consider my plight and release me from Apptain America's evil clutches. I love an iPad, but wouldn't want to spend too much time in here!

All good campaigns offer one main reason to vote so I'm hoping a hostage situation helps. If not, then my mix of industry news, design, tech, publishing and innovation insight and general irreverence keeps you entertained. My audiences at numerous conferences, on Nikki Bedi's BBC show and the amazing Dadsaster podcast add some extra spice.

Go on, you know it makes sense. Just follow the link, sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account, then add one more vote for @activrightbrain in #Apps, with one simple reason I should grab the award (good, bad or ugly).

Vote for @activrightbrain

Thanks