How Apple built visionOS
Apple entered spatial computing in 2023 with the launch of Apple Vision Pro. The headset itself is as good as you would expect from the tech company, but its operating system visionOS is a “feat of design”, in the words of D&AD judge Helen Fuchs, Executive Director, Design at ustwo.
visionOS is controlled with only your eyes, hands and voice. This meant that the tech company had to design an entire interface that used not a touchpad or a keyboard and mouse, but the “gaze” and “subtle gestures of the user”. Then, there was the technical challenge of designing a system that didn’t block out the real world, but was legible as a layer over it. For this, it won the Black Pencil in the Digital Design (Connected Experiences) category.
This new typology required an interdisciplinary approach. “The Apple Design Studio is a really special place,” Alan Dye, VP of Human Interface Design at Apple, says. “We bring together a wide range of expertise across nearly every design discipline. From industrial and user interface design, of course, but also through sound design, type design, graphic design, colour design, haptic design, as well as so many others. And Vision Pro brought the team together and required us to work together in entirely new ways, as well as to develop some new disciplines.”
“It's especially gratifying for us to receive the Black Pencil, because it recognises the craft and the care that went into designing so many aspects of this product.”
“It's especially gratifying for us to receive the Black Pencil, because it recognises the craft and the care that went into designing so many aspects of this product. Many of them that aren't usually celebrated as design – all those elements that can't be placed on a pedestal or hung on the wall of a museum. Rather, the gestures we’ve designed, the subtle animations and transitions,the gentle sounds, shadows and reflections, all those things that truly bring the digital world into your space. This is just the beginning of an important new chapter for computing and design.”