Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications

In order to keep the necessary effort as small as possible only
software parts which are relevant for the look-and-feel are to be
exchanged. This requires a sufficient decoupling, which can be
achieved by the MVC-pattern or in a layered architecture, in
which the HMI resides in the top-most layer.
Replacing the HMI-software with another manual implementation
allows for maximum adaptability. However, it only makes sense
in some cases since the synergy effect is low and the effort for
creating each skin is very high.
A particularity arises if aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is
used. AOP allows for separation of the skin-dependent part from
the skin-independent part of the HMI’s source code without
dictating specific software architecture. Both parts are then
assembled using weaving during compilation or runtime 5 . This
additional step leads, though, to more complexity (Figure 8).
Figure 8: Exchanging the HMI-software
6. EXAMPLE AND USAGE SCENARIO
The Volkswagen Group applies skinning in the development of its
infotainment system families, which are used by many brands and
in many models. The hardware and basic services are standard
across the brands. Based on that, a basic Volkswagen HMI is
developed using model driven approaches and code generation. In
order to offer products with their own brand-specific design the
individual company brands adjust this basic HMI by skinning.
They use skin editors to create the skins that are applied by
automatically adapting the base HMI-models before code
generation.
7. CONCLUSION
In the development of infotainment systems skinning can be
applied for different reasons. The skinning techniques available
were discussed in this paper. Which one is suited for a particular
purpose primarily depends on who is to use them and at what
point in the development process. Table 1 below summarizes
these results. Note that some of the skinning techniques can also
be used together.
The HMI implementation should be carefully planned when
developing a system that employs skinning, so that the
development methodology is defined with respect to the different
skinning techniques that exist.
5 Runtime weaving requires the usage of additional libraries and
can lead to performance drawbacks.
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Ms. Loumidi, Mr. Schrader, and
Mr. Wäsch for their contribution to this paper.
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