Anritsu MG8000
An Ergonomic Update
For An Industry Workhorse
The design of Anritsu's MG8000 series synthesizers presented IDE with the challenge of reaffirming an established and well-known product. From the outset of the project, it was clear that with research and sensitivity to experienced users an improved ergonomic design could be accomplished.The new front panel designs represent a departure from past instruments by utilizing soft tapering arcs and subtly sloped plateaus to organize the user controls and connectors into easily distinguished areas. It avoids boring and often confusing grid-like solutions so often associated with scientific equipment.
The MG series are precision laboratory instruments essential in the development of the many electronic consumer devices we use in our daily lives. Development and test engineers use these products to verify, diagnose, and simulate microwave signals, allowing them to design, debug or enhance the performance of electronic circuits.
Microwave synthesizers have been in use for several decades. Their product life cycle can be as long as ten years, thus the user lives with the design for an extended period of time. As a result, there are certain expectations with respect to the physical user interface. Through research, IDE's design team discovered that synthesizer operators relied heavily upon tactile feedback when traversing the instrument's numerous buttons and controls. Experienced engineers learn to use these instruments the same way an experienced musician plays a musical instrument. The formidable task for IDE was to create an improved user interface with a bold aesthetic that would carry the product through the next decade yet not alienate Anritsu's existing customer base.
The display's importance is also reinforced by the sweeping asymmetrical surface immediately below it, which presents the interactive soft function keys in a friendly manner and emphasizes the front panel's sleek low profile. Buttons were organized into easy to use clusters that are terraced onto contoured surfaces, which radiate outward from the display. This enables the user to find his/her way from function to function by touch rather than sight, allowing them to keep their eye on the rapidly changing data in the display. The tactile and sculptural quality of the front panel results in a friendly topographical solution to the organization and hierarchy of the controls (physical user interface).
IDE's design carries Anritsu's family of synthesizer products into the next decade and provides a design path for the evolution of future products. It was selected for the cover of Microwave and RF magazine, January 2001.
Visual And Tactile Hierarchy
The main visual interface for the user is the LCD. It presents complex graphical data that responds instantly to a change in input. The IDE design team created a visual and tactile hierarchy of button clusters and controls with the display as the focal point. The display, though positioned to the left side of the front panel, is visually balanced by the subtle radiating key cluster plateaus, which transition from one to the another through gentle tapering arcs.
In addition to the design of the MG series, IDE was retained by Anritsu's front panel supplier to manufacture a small quantity of working prototypes. IDE's prototyping facility was used to produce the keys and front panel plastics because of its precision CNC rapid prototyping capability. The IDE manufactured parts were subsequently shipped to Anritsu's supplier, who assembled the electronics and shipped the completed working front panel assemblies to Anritsu.