Rocky User Interface

In 2021, along with the redesign of Rocky's Icons, I was in charge of redesigning the UI of Rocky, making its style more modern and standardised. Rocky is a engineering simulation software that was, at the time, part of ESSS products and in 2023 was acquired by Ansys.

Project Observations and Constraints

• Rocky uses the QT framework, which means that its redesign was bound to QT restrictions as well as Rocky's own core specifities.
• Rocky's default theme was light, but it was a long-standing request from the Support theme for Rocky to also have a dark theme, so this was a opportunity to provide that.
• Instead of designing mock-ups and handing them to the development team, the testing and validating process was made using a script that made it possible to test the new stylesheets directly on the software.

Solutions

Above are some examples of the software in action. A color palette of light and dark shades of gray was defined to be used in most elements of the user interface. For emphasis, shades of blue were used, except in more exceptional elements such as warnings. The style made use of borders delimiting the elements and rounded corners to make it visually lighter. The font used was Segoe UI for Windows and Selawik for Linux.