Graduate Designer Profiles – 4th Level Show

Designer Profile – Yuri Brigadir

Yuri studied Product Design at DIT. As his final year project he designed an eye strain warning and awareness system for computer monitor users, which guides them towards a correct posture for viewing the monitor. According to researchers at National Optometry Centre of Ireland, there is a certain position which one has to take, if he/she wants to view the monitor with less eye strain.

Yuri’s design contains a webcam that tracks the location of a user’s face, and a software package that guides the user towards taking a correct viewing position. The webcam is designed to clip to any kind of monitor. It contains a tilt sensor, that measures its tilt angle. The software package knows what type of monitor is connected to the computer, as it can obtain this data from the computer’s operating system. Therefore, the software knows how much is it possible to tilt the monitor. It can tell the user whether to lower the chair or tilt the screen.

The software package is embedded in the webcam itself, eliminating the need for CD-ROM’s and complex installation procedures. It warns the user whether he/she is too close, sitting too low or too high and recommends when to take breaks. It shows these warnings through graphical images and instructional animations. Before the user switches off the computer, it reminds him/her how many times he/she was sitting in front of a computer in an eye-straining position.

It’s a brilliant idea and Yuri got lots of praise on his design when it was on display here in designist.
You can see the design below – it’s one of those things you know we’ll all be using in time as computers become more and more a part of everyone’s lives. ( Good forward thinkin Yuri!!)

We asked Yuri the following questions and here is how he responded:

d: Who is your design hero?
YB: My design hero is Buckminster Fuller. Not many other designers had the guts to do what he has done.

d: What’s the thing you’ll miss most about being in college?
YB: One thing that I miss most about being in college are my classmates. I’ve almost become attached to them. Right now, every day seems less exciting without their presence. Graduation feels like a relationship break up.

d: Which product / machine / concept do you wish you had designed?
Q4. I wish I have taken part in design of “Lumi” textile printing process. This was invented by a group of design graduates from California. Now they have a steady stream of work. Amazing work.

d: PC or Mac?
YB: I hate them both. I wish all my design thoughts could be automatically converted to a finished product or a prototype. It would be great if I could sketch proper design drawings with a pencil on a massive canvas, without fiddling with computer settings.

d: What city would you like to live in? – even just for a little while.
YB: I’d love to live in my home city of Lviv, in Ukraine. It’s such an amazing place, it’s a mixture of Paris, Vienna and Prague. It’s a pity that the local government is totally incapable of managing it well. I wouldn’t be against Germans or Austrians taking over it, like they did a century ago.

Yuri with his project in designist

Yuri’s design hero – The great Buckminster Fuller

If Yuri had his way, we’d forget about PCs and Macs and draw like this all the time!

Yuri’s prototype