Empowering Experience Makers to Bridge Design & Engineering
Accelerate Complex HMI Creation from Concept to Code with No-Code Power
Creating complex user experiences and human-machine interfaces is a significant challenge today. Transforming systems (complex or not) into smart products requires perfect orchestration between user interactions and multiple functions to build a unique experience. The difficulty arises when specifying what a user feels and perceives when using a system, and how to imagine and specify interaction without prototyping early on. The traditional approach faces limits when executing the customer journey, making it hard to translate ideas and thoughts into technical specifications quickly and avoid the “tunnel effect” in UX-driven projects.
To address these challenges and speed up UX-driven project execution, epicnpoc developed BOWL®, a software suite that captures the company’s know-how. BOWL® empowers UX designers and software engineers, allowing them to collaborate and significantly enhance how innovation projects are run.
What is BOWL®?
BOWL® is a process and a software product designed to create Human Machine Interfaces for complex environments. It is no-code software for designers to prototype their user experience. Its purpose is to break down complexity into re-usable pieces called components. BOWL® enables non-software people to understand how to specify their interactions using a no-code/low-code approach, helping to shrink the development phase and maximize the validation one with real users. It allows non-software people to turn their ideas into software and generate technical specifications if needed.
BOWL® insures a permanent and perfect link between the two universes: the UX/UI and the technical team. It is an open platform that connects the dots between humans from various backgrounds (tech and non-tech) and the tools they use, thanks to connectors that make them compatible. It functions as an integration platform to speed up team creativity and project execution.
It’s important to note that BOWL® is not a graphical environment, a UI tool, a development environment, or a Model-based System Engineering tool. Instead, it’s a software platform that integrates the artifacts from these tools to create a software prototype that can be validated. BOWL® is also described as a frugal software solution that runs on your computer(s) or embedded platforms(s).
How to Use BOWL® to Build Your Experience
BOWL® proposes organizing projects into 3 main phases:
- Jumpstart: Define your Customer journey thanks to the BOWL® Studio using a catalog of predefined functions to specify and test your prototype.
- Develop: Generate the various interfaces, APIs, and FMUs that will enable technical teams to develop requirements.
- Experience: Generate the software and validate it with users. You can cycle through these phases, keeping consistency between UX/UI requirements and technical developments. With BOWL®, you never start new projects from scratch; you re-use function blocks provided by epicnpoc and partners or from your previous projects, making your prototyping sustainable.
Key Benefits of BOWL®
- Develop product experience with a no-code interface.
- Bridge design and develop teams.
- Connect with professional tools like Figma and MBSE programs. BOWL® creates a symbiosis between specialized tools (GUI, wireframing, code, models) and integrates artifacts from a large panel of existing and reference tools (edited by Figma, Unity, Kanzi, Altia, Qt, Matlab, Ansys, Dassault Systèmes…).
- Generate a functional user interface. It can generate your GUIs based on Web or Unity graphical environments and create multi-modal input methods.
- Deploy with generated embedded software. BOWL® empowers non-software users to generate and deploy software on a large set of hardware targets with a simple press button function.
- Save time with a ready-to-use technology ecosystem.
- Create your unique experience for all the users interacting with your systems.
- Transition prototypes to production by creating the related SYSML specifications to be integrated in a MBSE tool such as Catia Magic from Dassault Systèmes.
The concepts manipulated by BOWL® are agnostic from the application domain you want to address. While some of functional components provided with BOWL® are Automotive oriented (vehicle simulation, Driver Monitoring System…) while most of them are suitable for any kind of application domain (audio/video management, Script reco, User manager…).
BOWL® is released as an on-premise app that can be installed on a Windows or Linux PC. The software is divided into BOWL® Factory (that hosts BOWL® Studio to enable users to define and test their experiences) and BOWL® Runtime (that hosts and executes the software generated by the BOWL® Factory). It is a frugal software solution.
Participate in the Beta and Become an “Experience Maker”
The BOWL® beta version will be launched at Vivatech 2025. We invite you to discover its power and contribute to its evolution.
To become an “Experience Maker” and get access to the BOWL® Software Suite, simply contact us at contact@epicnpoc.com or use the form on our Web site. Please provide us your professional information as well as a few words to explain why you would be interested in using BOWL® Software Suite.
Join us in this new era of human-machine interface design and development!