Tactile partnered with Digital Control Inc. (DCI) to help design ARES, DCI’s next-generation DigiTrak HDD locating system and the company’s first ground-up locator in nearly two decades. This collaboration brought together our expertise in human-centered industrial and digital design with DCI’s leadership in horizontal directional drilling technology to create a more intuitive, precise, and future-ready field tool. We helped reimagine the operator experience for ARES, a fully reengineered locating platform intended to define the next era of DigiTrak systems. Building on a long-standing relationship that includes prior collaborations like the DCI TeraTrak R1, the teams worked closely from early vision through refinement to align hardware, interface, and workflow around real job site needs. Congrats to our friends at DCI on their recent launch of ARES!