Catch the Light

About The Entry

Reading a page and losing your place on every line. Reaching for a glass of water and missing it. Looking at someone's face and not being able to see their eyes.

One in a thousand people lives this every day. After a stroke, a surgery, a neurological event, part of the visual field disappears. What exists for them: expensive clinical devices, software from 2003, weekly hospital appointments. Nothing for daily life at home. Nothing that feels human.

In May 2025, Olia had brain surgery. When she woke up, half her visual field was gone. Her twin sister Alina started building something to help her understand where her blind spot was. First dots on a Figma artboard. Then a Unity prototype. Then a full app, because the tools that existed were not enough.

Olia designed every screen while living with the deficit. She felt what was wrong before she could name it. Nothing important near the edges, because she could not see them. High contrast always on. One thing per screen. The designer and the user were the same person, at the same time.

Catch the Light adapts to each user's specific deficit. Before any practice begins, the app builds a personal vision map. Not a clinical test. A tool that belongs to the user. Every session adapts to it. Every day begins with a simple question: how is your vision today? The plan is built around the answer.

The biggest design challenge was not the features. It was the words. Not exercises but practices. Not a perimetry test but Build Your Map. Not progress but rhythm. The app never promises to restore vision. What it says, quietly, every day: you can practice. You can get more comfortable. You can stay in the game.

Visual field loss often cannot be reversed. What someone needs then is not a promise of recovery, but a companion in learning to live differently. Catch the Light makes that companion affordable, daily, and human. Designed around dignity, not diagnosis.

Released April 2, 2026. Over 1,000 demo installs. catchthelight.app

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