Behind the Design 2020
July 24, 2020
The Apple Design Awards celebrate innovation, ingenuity, design excellence, and outstanding technical achievement. The ADAs highlight developers who take thoughtful and creative approaches to their apps and games, giving people new ways to work, play, or imagine things that were never before possible.
To celebrate the 2020 winners, we’ve put together exclusive interviews with each developer about their app, creative process, and how they brought their bold and distinctive ideas to life.
Eran Hilleli, Looom
“The design thought of Looom is the flow first — experience first... Trying to make drawn animation exist in some tool that was almost like a Gameboy... something you can kick back and relax, which is not something that, usually, animation is about.”
Behind the Design: Looom
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Sam Rosenthal, Where Cards Fall
“A lot of the game feels very melancholic but at the same time — it's a hopeful game. So the app icon is our main character in the winter — which is the present day — looking up... It is not somebody that is lost in the past but somebody that maybe has learned from what happened, has reflected and is looking towards what could be next.”
Behind the Design: Where Cards Fall
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Jenova Chen, Sky: Children of the Light
“With very small changes in the design, you can change how [the player] behaves, how they treat each other in your game. I think it’s your responsibility to think about: How are these players going to interact with your app, with your game, you know, on a daily basis? Is that healthy for them? Is that going to make them be thankful... rather than having resentment of the experience?”
Behind the Design: Sky: Children of the Light
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David William Hearn, StaffPad
“The core tenet of the app is really: How is this helping me write music? How is this making my day nicer and better and hopefully making me write better music? If it can help me do that, and at least if I finish a project and I don’t feel exhausted at the end of it, then I think that every idea has been worth it. But there’s always more to do. It’s never done.”
Behind the Design: StaffPad
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István Csanády, Shapr 3D
“I think that great interaction design is... always a lot of blood, sweat, and tears... There are no shortcuts because this is something that you can't really figure out. You just have to observe how your users actually want to interact your with design or with your software... we did hundreds of prototypes, interaction prototypes -- you can step-by-step get to the right solution... it took us four and a half years to get to this level of polish.”
Behind the Design: Shapr 3D
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Simon Flesser, Sayonara Wild Hearts
“This is a game that is very much about the music, right?... It started very differently, with a much more sinister tone. But then as we were playing our prototype, randomly, this really energetic, pop song came on in the background... And it sort of just clicked. I literally said, ‘This is it.’”
Behind the Design: Sayonara Wild Hearts
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Majd Taby, Darkroom
"We've tried to abstract away all the complexity of photo editing — no import, no export, hiding away the complexity unless you ask for it... the app is much more powerful and complex than the design… that's just part of the ongoing design challenge of trying to make something that's usable and powerful at the same time."
Behind the Design: Darkroom
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Phillip Stollenmayer, Song of Bloom
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell what the game is trying to tell you. Some images are so abstract that you have to make up your own interpretation. To help the game communicate on every available channel, it was important to give it another sense... from the haptic vibrations, it helps you to understand if this is an active scene or a calm one — you get a really nice sense for the mood.”
