Making UX easy on THE EYES

Faurecia IRYStec combined physiology and image processing to create uniquely personalized high-fidelity screen displays, as pioneered by Mercedes' MBUX. The company's founder explains.

The vital concept of personalized vision has been around since the 13th century, allegedly when the first eyeglasses appeared in Italy. It took nearly another 500 years for American inventor Benjamin Franklin to create bifocal lenses. If he'd had a glimpse into the future, the forward-thinking Franklin may have wondered why, with electronic display screens dominating 21st century life, the ability to deliver eye-friendly displays customized to the user's own vision had been largely neglected.

That development came in 2015 when Tara Akhavan, an entrepreneurial Montreal-based computer engineer, completed her initial proof-of-concept for what became the world's first software platform using perception and physiology to optimize the user experience (UX) of display systems. Akhavan founded a company, IRYStec Software, to take her idea to market. Mobility applications soon became a focus, and with the help of fore-sighted investors and Tier-1 supplier Faurecia (whose Faurecia Clarion Electronics group acquired IRYStec in 2020), Akhavan's pioneering technology entered production in the MBUX Hyperscreen fitted in the 2021 Mercedes-Benz E-Class convertible.