Projects I managed

Industrial design: JOYVOX

The new hardware. With strong software and media support.

Interest in retro computers is steadily growing among gamers, collectors and historians. Until now, one treasure has remained hidden – the Soviet БК 0010 with its unique architecture, processor, and instruction set that can’t be found in any Western or Japanese home computer.

To make БК 0010 and its game library known and desired by collectors, I decided to equip this machine with handy gamepads and advanced sound capabilities. To accomplish this goal, I formed and coordinated a team that developed a new hardware product, as well as software.

While leading the project, I was also responsible for research, pricing, components, logistics, task management, programming, visual design, and public relations.

As a result, our team shipped JOYVOX – a successful product that has become the new standard for retro video game championships, museums of computer history, etc. Thanks to JOYVOX, БК 0010 became the true gaming platform. Very soon enthusiasts started to develop new games and hardware compatible with our product. Immediately afterward, БК 0010 selling price increased several times, indicating collectors' interest. Now БК 0010 platform is included in the program of European computer art festivals as a creative and gaming platform.

My speech at Yandex

The SANDS company

Interaction design in education and video game industry.

I founded a company aimed at creating sound atmospheres, effects and music for multimedia products. We have completed hundreds of complex projects for major game studios and publishers in Russia, as well as for foreign companies, never inflating the team size beyond seven employees.

We have always convinced our partners that sound should be designed early in the development phase, because sound decisions influence the rest of the interaction design and also help to choose the technologies.

The SandS company was a pioneer of interactive sound. We developed unique adaptive sound systems for several projects, and later presented them at the video game developers conference and in publications. We participated in the development and testing of the popular BASS library, requesting new features to use in our games. We also convinced Skale Tracker developers to release their library for video games, and were the first to use it. The SunVox library was another of our innovations. Thanks to our passion for technical innovation and optimization, we have raised the size/quality ratio of game music to a level never seen before, every time.

At the SandS, I was responsible for communications, legal documents and technical specifications, technology, production, additional musicians recording, deadline and quality control, organization and management.

SandS web site

Products I designed

Product design in ACRONIS

UX/UI for Acronis True Image, Acronis Rescue Media, Acronis Monitoring and more.

As the senior product designer, I was responsible for the Acronis’ flagship product – True Image for Windows, for 3 releases. One of my first tasks was to refresh the interface. It looked nice already and there was no aesthetic reason to change it. So I came at it from a different angle: I identified problems with consistency, visual hierarchy, terminology, accessibility, and other things that complicate the user experience. Fixing these issues became the meaningful goal of the redesign. Among other things, I made layout flexible to maximize usability across screen resolutions and languages. Subsequently, I designed all new True Image features.

During my work, I established close ties with the localization, R&D, QA, and technical support departments, which was a novelty for our design department. I have also drafted several documents that facilitate understanding between colleagues from different professions. I believe that I have made a significant contribution to improving the processes and atmosphere within the company.

I am proud to have introduced the practice of user testing at Acronis: not only did I create interactive prototypes and moderate user testing myself, but I also engaged a research company for wider coverage of audience.

Later, I led the development of small products not only as a designer, but also as a product manager, setting tasks for other departments and controlling the result.

Selected works for Acronis