Behind the Design: 2023 Apple Design Awards

Every year, the Behind the Design bid takes a peculiar look astatine the singular teams down the Apple Design Award-winning apps and games. Read connected to conscionable 12 unthinkable teams from astir the satellite and larn however they brought their winning ideas to life.

---

Winners successful the class supply a large acquisition for each by supporting radical from a diverseness of backgrounds, abilites, and languages.

App

Universe

Launched successful 2017, the powerful, versatile, and astir unbelievably elemental Universe makes creating a website arsenic casual arsenic gathering with blocks. The app operates connected a grid system. To make a site, adhd blocks to the grid, and to edit a site, determination those blocks around. The app doesn’t conscionable region barriers, it bulldozes them. “Our extremity is making this exertion disposable to everybody,” says laminitis Joseph Cohen.

Behind the Design: Universe

View now

Game

stitch.

For each its galore genres and styles, the gaming satellite has been awfully threadbare erstwhile it comes to experiences astir embroidery. That each changes with stitch., a charming transverse betwixt casual puzzler, meditative exercise, and day trade task — and arsenic cross-generational a crippled arsenic you’re apt to find. “We pridefulness ourselves connected making games that anyone tin play,” says Jakob Lykkegaard, laminitis of Lykke Studios, the squad down stitch. “It’s important to walk the clip to marque them disposable for everyone.”

Behind the Design: stitch.

View now

Winners successful this class supply memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences that are enhanced by Apple technologies.

App

Duolingo

What makes Duolingo specified an engaging mode to larn a language? The reply is hiding successful plain sight. “The concealed to Duolingo is that we’re not an acquisition company. We’re a amusive and information company,” says Ryan Sims, VP of design. “Fun is the astir important portion of the enactment we do.”

Behind the Design: Duolingo

View now

Game

Afterplace

At archetypal glance, Evan Kice’s Afterplace appears to person time-traveled from the precocious 1980s. But it’s a decidedly modern crippled excessively — fast, fluid, and incredibly casual to prime up. Enemies lurk everyplace and levels agelong retired successful each directions; what looks similar a humble room is secretly a multilevel maze. “I ever loved it erstwhile a crippled conscionable kept going,” says Kice. “I was fascinated by the thought that a crippled could clasp an full country.”

Behind the Design: Afterplace

View now

Winners successful this class present intuitive interfaces and effortless controls that are perfectly tailored to their platform.

App

Flighty

Flighty mightiness beryllium the easiest happening travelers navigate connected their full trip. “Travel tin beryllium a high-stress situation,” says Ryan Jones, the Austin-based developer who founded the app successful 2019. “We privation Flighty to enactment truthful good that it feels astir boringly obvious.”

Behind the Design: Flighty

View now

Game

Railbound

In Railbound, players are challenged to nexus bid cars successful due bid by laying down way done a mechanic that’s arsenic elemental arsenic digit painting. “I wage a batch of attraction to input,” says Luke Spierewka of the game’s Afterburn studio. “For Railbound, I wanted a strategy wherever you fundamentally overgarment obstruction tiles with 1 finger.”

Behind the Design: Railbound

View now

Winners successful this class amended lives successful a meaningful mode and radiance a airy connected important issues.

App

Headspace

Few apps person made mindfulness arsenic accessible arsenic Headspace. More than a decennary since its launch, the app continues to acceptable the modular for intelligence wellness apps. “Mindfulness, meditation, intelligence wellness — nary of these are casual to navigate,” says Jeff Birkeland, elder vice president for subordinate products. “An app that feels warm, friendly, and casual to usage tin supply approachable enactment for pugnacious issues.”

Behind the Design: Headspace

View now

Game

Endling

Endling is simply a 3D escapade successful which you play arsenic a fox navigating a onshore charred by biology catastrophe and quality impact. It’s besides a almighty premix of mean and message. “It’s a endurance game, but a simplified 1 that focuses much connected telling a story,” says Philipp Nägelsbach, crippled decorator and shaper astatine HandyGames.

Behind the Design: Endling

View now

Winners successful this class diagnostic stunning imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations that lend to a distinctive and cohesive theme.

App

Any Distance

Luke Beard, the Atlanta-based decorator who created Any Distance with technologist Daniel Kuntz, says the app is “for everyone, not conscionable athletes.” Their app is simply a design-forward fittingness tracker and societal web that delivers workout stats successful beauteous and shareable formats — dynamic charts and graphs, animated 3D maps, AR experiences, and gorgeous cards — that tin integrate photos. And its sanction is besides its philosophy: Any region counts, not conscionable a aquatics oregon motorcycle ride, but a walking meeting, stroller run, oregon its astir fashionable option, a canine walk.

Behind the Design: Any Distance

View now

Game

Resident Evil Village

The fearfulness escapade comes to Mac with Apple silicon, with each the ocular achievements fans of the long-running bid could anticipation for. From its creepy castle to its decrepit factories to its magnificently hideous villains, Resident Evil Village offers immoderate of the astir realistic graphics ever seen connected Apple devices. “The conception was a fearfulness taxable parkland with unsocial characters that basal retired against a beauteous environment,” says shaper Tsuyohi Kanda.

Behind the Design: Resident Evil Village

View now

Winners successful this class supply a state-of-the-art acquisition done caller usage of Apple technologies that acceptable them isolated successful their genre.

App

SwingVision

When Swupnil Sahai started creating SwingVision, helium had nary app-building acquisition — but he’d played a batch of tennis. “The archetypal thought was, ‘Maybe we tin usage the accelerometer and gyroscope connected Apple Watch to fig retired however accelerated I’m swinging, and possibly we tin usage the [Apple Watch] surface to support score,’” says Sahai. “That was truly it.” Today, SwingVision has go an integral portion of the tennis community.

Behind the Design: SwingVision

View now

Game

MARVEL SNAP

MARVEL SNAP reboots the collectible paper crippled genre with brisk gameplay, a chaotic formed of superheroes, and its “snap” mechanic, a double-or-nothing stake that adds full caller layers of strategy-slash-psychological warfare. “Our extremity arsenic designers is to maximize that ratio of complexity and depth,” says Ben Brode, main improvement serviceman for Second Dinner.

Behind the Design: MARVEL SNAP

View now