IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2018 - 96

visual system (HVS) works. Also, there
are certain negative side effects of looking at displays, such as sleep disturbances correlated with viewing certain screen
colors in the evening. Simply put, engineers have not yet caught up with the
latest science. You might have noticed
the bedtime color filters now being offered on some devices, which is a welcome move in the right direction, but is
still not enough.
Wilson: How has IRYStec approached
this differently?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: Right from
the beginning, we have been working
closely with top scientists who understand the influences of age, sex, and
ethnicity on the HVS, as well as the
perceptual effects of different hue and
luminance in ambient lighting. We are
effectively transferring this knowledge
from the physiology and psychology
domains to consumer electronics. Most
of the knowledge transfer happens via
our advisory board, one of our greatest
assets, as well as through joint projects
with research groups.
Wilson: How does the PDP help?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: Our PDP
uses algorithms to predict how the HVS
will perceive an image compared to its
intended effect and will then modify
what is rendered to the display to compensate for the difference. It takes into
account several pieces of data, including the user's demographics, the results
of a short initial calibration, and the
dynamic ambient light as recorded by
an image sensor on the device. The first
two generate fixed parameters for the
user, while the third is dynamic, depending on the environment.
Wilson: What is so special about
IRYStec's solution?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: First, we
have a portfolio of technologies applicable to different situations, not just a single solution, which we learned early on,
was going to be strategically important.
Second, ours is pure software that is typically integrated at the operating system
layer, whereas competitors' solutions
are mostly in the hardware. It was a real
challenge to get these complex algorithms to run as lightweight embedded
software on device manufacturers' chip
96 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

july 2018

architectures, so that they actually save
more power than they consume for the
processing (thanks to brightness reduction), and improve the user experience.
Wilson: How did you get started?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: We started at
an incubator in Montréal, Canada, called
TandemLaunch, which helped us with
seed funding, mentoring, and by giving us
some credibility when we were hiring and
building an advisory board. Our business
idea changed five times in the first six
months. We first felt that things were
working out when we raised funds from
investors, since this was an external endorsement that we were doing something
worthwhile. Meeting investors was initially quite daunting because they notoriously
gave very little useful feedback, making it
hard to know where we stood.
Wilson: Where are you now?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: Three years
later, we're a team of 27 people who are
focused on the mobile and automotive
industries. Last year, we closed our first
deal, which generated our first revenue.
Commercially, we're working with a dozen
or so handset manufacturers, of which
more than a half dozen are in detailed
evaluation of our smartphone technology.
We've brought a few phone manufacturers to preproduction. In the automotive
industry, we've signed a few licensing
agreements with the best-known original
equipment manufacturers and tier-one
automotive suppliers, where we're developing and supporting the software for
driver information systems.
Wilson: What would you say is
most important when building a new
company?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: Initially, the
biggest challenge was finding the right
market fit for the technology and learning
how to position our product. In the first
year, funding was the immediate focus.
In the second year, it seemed all about the
technology; patents can be necessary for
convincing people, but we learned that it
is a misconception to think that the intellectual property is all that matters. Now,
in our third year, the biggest challenge is
scaling the team, attracting the right
expertise, and keeping people motivated.
So it keeps changing. Being taken seriously as two women cofounders has chal-

lenges of its own, so you definitely need
to be strong-willed and try not to be discouraged by self-doubt-something women
are perhaps more prone to do.
Wilson: What are the biggest risks
you've taken?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: Just doing
this at all was risky, since the statistics
about the survival rate of start-ups can
make for depressing reading. Running a
young business can be all-consuming.
Tara put her Ph.D. degree on hold and
even postponed her wedding! Her husband was patient enough to wait, but
everyone warned her that if she interrupted her Ph.D. she would never finish
it, but she completed it in 2017. She
moved from Vienna, Austria, to Montréal, Canada, which posed its own challenges regarding work permits.
Wilson: Do you have any final words
for our readers?
IRYStec Software, Inc.: Many of us
spend at least 8 h per day in front of computer screens at work, not to mention the
time we spend looking at our smartphones, tablets, and TVs in our leisure
time. So it feels like a worthwhile cause
to make these experiences as comfortable
as possible, and that's what keeps us
motivated through the ups and downs of
the rollercoaster start-up ride.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Wilson (tomwilson@ieee.org) is the
chief technology officer at Concured,
whose Montréal-based research and
development team is applying the latest
advances in natural language understanding to the booming content marketing industry.

REFERENCES
[1] S. Beatty, M. Boulton, D. Henson, H. H.
Koh, and I. J. Murray, "Macular pigment and
age related macular degeneration," Brit. J.
Ophthalmology, vol. 83, no. 7, pp. 867-877,
1999.
[2] M. Fairchild and R. Heckaman, "Measuring observer metamerism: The Nimeroff
approach," Color Res. Applicat., vol. 41, pp.
115-124, 2016.
[3] M. E. Sloane, C. Owsley, and C. A. Jackson, "Aging and luminance-adaptation effects
on spatial contrast sensitivity," J. Optical Soc.
Amer. A, vol. 5, pp. 2181-2190, 1988.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2018