Michael Okuda is an American graphic designer best known for his work on Star Trek including designing futuristic computer user interfaces known as "okudagrams". Career Work in Star Trek In the mid-1980s, he designed the look of animated computer displays for the USS Enterprise-A bridge in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. This led to a staff position on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 as a scenic artist, adding detail to set designs and props. To The Next Generation he contributed the GUI of the fictional LCARS computer system used throughout the USS Enterprise-D and other Starfleet starships. In homage to its creator, this visual style has come to be known among fans as "okudagrams". Okuda also served as a technical consultant on the various TNG-era Star Trek series along with Rick Sternbach, advising the scriptwriters on the technology used throughout the Star Trek universe such as the transporters and the warp drive, for example Okuda created the Heisenberg compensator as a way to explain how Star Treks fictional transporter might work, despite the limitation of the uncertainty principle. Okuda famously answered the question "How does the Heisenberg compensator work?" with "It works very well, thank you." This work resulted in a technical manual which was distributed to prospective scriptwriters along with the series bible. The manual was later published in revised and updated form as the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual by Pocket Books. Okuda then went on to write a number of Star Trek books with his wife, Denise. He continued working at Paramount Studios on multiple Star Trek series that followed The Next Generation, including as an art supervisor on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and through to the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2005. He also worked on the Star Trek movies that were produced while the various television series were in production. He also served as one of the producers when CBS digitally remastered and updated special visual effects for the original series. Okuda is known for including in-jokes within his designs. In April 2013, Phil Plait (Bad Astronomy blogger) reported that Okuda had included an oblique homage to The West Wing in the Voyager episode "Imperfection", by having Seven of Nine look at a list of Voyager crew who had died, and there listing Commander J. Bartlett (intentional misspelling), Lieutenant Commander L. McGarry, Lieutenant Commander T.