Apple Design Awards 2022

Last week, during the developer sessions at WWDC 2022, I caught an interview with the winners of the Apple Design Awards 2022. The video was about twenty minutes long, filled with snippets of answers to various questions. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but you could sense the philosophy of these creators who had crafted recognized masterpieces. A few highlights include:

• If I came up with 50 ideas in a day and 49 were absolutely useless and one was really good, that’s a very good day. Even if you find just one gem among fifty ideas, that’s a win.
• Making something simple is quite complex. Simplicity is a beautiful complexity.
• Make as much as you can. They don’t have to be huge. They don’t have to be exciting. But the more you make, the more you learn how to make. Create as much as you can. They don’t need to be grand or thrilling. But the more you create, the more you learn how to create.
• Pushing the limits has never been the problem. Pushing boundaries is part of the game.
• When to leave it alone and stop tinkering on it. Know when to let go and stop tinkering.
• Let go of some of your assumptions. Sometimes, you need to let go of your assumptions.

Personally, I believe UX is the art form that interacts most closely with technology. On the surface, it’s like deciding what dishes to place on a table from a vast array of prepared foods, and the more you have, the deeper the contemplation. But remember, there’s only one person sitting at that table.

Just like how choosing clothes to discard from your wardrobe is often more challenging than selecting new clothes to buy, UX designers constantly ponder what to remove from the screen rather than what to add. Letting go always comes with responsibility and sometimes, you have to endure criticism. People emphasize the importance of UX, placing heavy burdens on UX designers, but is it really their exclusive role? Even before the mobile era, determining how to deliver a domain’s business philosophy to users was a critical part of application development projects. It’s not about whose role it is; it has to be prepared.

To maximize UX, the arrangement of content and the delivery mechanism must be considered based on a deep understanding of the service or content being offered (sometimes even the structural layer of service creation). This means the expertise of nearly everyone involved in the project must harmonize together. Can you structure the flow of a service and arrange its functions without understanding the unique features of the algorithms you’ve prepared, how they operate, and what you wish to convey to users? Can you create the ultimate user experience? This isn’t a task that can be done by passing the ball around. It’s about sitting together and piecing the puzzle together.

Here’s to those tirelessly working to create something new in offices where no one is watching. I’d like to share one memorable piece of advice from an award winner:

You can steal, but steal from the best and always add your own kind of magic fairy dust. Borrow ideas from the best, but always sprinkle your own magic.