User-friendly Switches : Dolphin Charger's expertise rewarded by Groupe Beneteau
As a world leader in the marine industry, Groupe Beneteau organizes an annual supplier symposium to present its 5-year strategy and to reward its most innovative partners. This year, during the 2021 edition, Dolphin Charger® received the User Interface award, rewarding a 3-year work around more ergonomic boat switches for the user. A good example of Dolphin Charger and Cats Power Design's ability to adapt to their customers' needs and propose tailor-made solutions! Here is a look back at a successful project, at the service of the user experience.
Dolphin Charger and Groupe Beneteau: a win-win partnership
From battery chargers to electronic power boards for boat power management, Dolphin Charger® has been supplying Groupe Beneteau with energy and DC distributions solutions for years. Products installed under the floor, in an electrical cabinet, in an engine room... Although crucial to the boat's operation, Dolphin's expertise was until now hidden from the end user's eyes.
Determined to make the user experience a priority in its development, the Groupe Beneteau set out to find a solution to improve the ergonomics of the switches on board its boats. This was an opportunity for Dolphin Charger® to move away from its historical core business - electronic design - to propose an innovative solution.
The challenge: to move from standard boat switches, with industrial ergonomics, to a more intuitive design, close to automotive solutions.
How Dolphin was able to adapt to its customer's needs to offer a tailor-made solution
To offer its customers more user-friendly switches, Groupe Beneteau turned to the automotive industry to design sketches of ergonomic keyboards. Then they looked for the right supplier to design and produce these new switches. Dolphin Charger's electronic know-how and its ability to work on small series (a few thousand units) convinced Groupe Beneteau.
Following an important work in plastics and mechatronics, Dolphin Charger has developed 3 and 6-key keypads, with various levels of finish (chrome, brushed stainless steel or anodized aluminum keys, backlighting, LED pictograms...), all with a design consistent with the visual identity of the Beneteau Group boats. Elegant and intuitive, these switches will allow users to operate all the equipment on board the boat :
- Windlass
- Navigation lights
- Bilge pump
- Horn
- Etc.
"Thanks to our teams, we have been able to move away from our historical electronic business lines to become more custom-oriented. Dolphin Charger® and Cats Power Design intend to capitalize on this experience to support other customers who would also like to improve their user experience, through keyboards and other innovative human machine interfaces", says Nicolas Fata, OEM & EXPORT Sales Manager at Dolphin Charger.
Already specialized in the design of human-machine interfaces (HMI), with touch screen 3,5” LED displays, the company, experts in electronic design, have just added a new string to their bow, to accompany their customers even further. Do you have a project related to HMI or electronic design? Tell us about your needs!
