{"id":125222,"date":"2021-08-09T16:00:12","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=5bcex7xf"},"modified":"2021-08-09T16:00:12","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T16:00:12","slug":"behind-the-design-pok-pok-playroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2021\/08\/09\/behind-the-design-pok-pok-playroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Pok Pok Playroom"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Beam<\/div>\n

When the husband-and-wife team of Esther Huybreghts and Mathijs Demaeght first began dreaming up Pok Pok Playroom<\/em>, they made a solemn vow: parents shouldn’t need to mute the app in a restaurant. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t want media and jingles and jangles that get stuck in your head,\u201d Huybreghts laughs. \u201cWe wanted a quieter experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the delight of dining parents everywhere, they got it: Their inventive children\u2019s sandbox is a quiet feast for little senses. There are switches to flip, gears to grind, blobs to plop together, and bells to ring \u2014 and those are just a handful of the animations designed to make the app feel like a tactile, handmade toy. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/div>\n

Huybreughts and Demaeght began their careers in the film and game design worlds before finding work with the independent Canadian studio Snowman (creators and producers of titles like Alto\u2019s Odyssey<\/em> and Alto\u2019s Adventure<\/em> as well as Where Cards Fall<\/em> and Skate City<\/em> for Apple Arcade). The duo began pondering developing an app for young children after they struggled to find the right kind of experience for their own kids. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want anything loud and overstimulating,\u201d Huybreughts says. \u201cWe wanted something quieter and educational, and we really didn\u2019t find anything that checked all those boxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, they decided to try and check those boxes themselves, building Pok Pok Playroom<\/em> on the side with frequent input from the duo\u2019s own in-house play-testers before eventually joining forces with their employers at Snowman. (The Snowman team loved the spirit of the app so much that they spun out a separate company, Pok Pok, focusing solely on educational children\u2019s entertainment.) <\/p>\n

\"The<\/div>\n

Huybreghts and Demaeght carefully designed the app\u2019s digital toybox atmosphere to both fire up children\u2019s minds and leave space for them to fill in details with their own imaginations. \u201cKids develop differently, and everyone who plays Pok Pok<\/em> approaches it with a different mindset,\u201d says Huybreghts. \u201cThat\u2019s the wonderful quality of open-ended play. There\u2019s something new to discover every time.\u201d<\/p>\n

To perfect the app\u2019s handcrafted look, Huybreghts dove back into her own art and animation history. \u201cI\u2019ve been drawing my whole life,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it\u2019s always been more on the sketchy side. Give me a pencil and a napkin and I\u2019m happy,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n

Huybreghts struggled to find Pok Pok<\/em>\u2019s look for some time, long enough that her husband stepped in to issue a nautical challenge. \u201cMathijs held up this toy boat that was lying around our living room among the millions of other toys and said, \u2018OK, Esther, stop stressing about it. Use only these three colors: red, yellow and blue.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"Huybreghts<\/div>\n

As a lifelong creative, Huybreghts was duly horrified. \u201cI was like, \u2018I can\u2019t do that!\u2019\u201d she laughs. \u201cHow would I even draw a tree?\u201d <\/p>\n

But the little boat (and its guidelines) proved inspiring. The new strategy \u2014 a mix of free play with friendly guidelines \u2014 also gave her room to experiment. \u201cI didn\u2019t want the artwork to be perfect, because that would mean I\u2019d have to animate everything perfectly. The rule was that everything could jitter a little bit, which took a lot of the pressure off me. Making everything too clean and too nice would have been too much work, especially since it was often just me drawing with one hand with a baby in the other.\u201d (Fun fact: All of Pok Pok<\/em>\u2019s designs began as iPad sketches.)<\/p>\n

With the visuals in motion, the challenge of matching audio fell to sound designer Matt Miller, who ended up recording every sound in the playroom: all the sloshing mops, sizzling grills, and wordless dialogue. \u201cThe idea was to create calming sounds,\u201d says Miller, \u201csomething that could be heard a number of times without becoming fatiguing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Miller<\/div>\n

Initially, Miller and Demaeght wanted to use a small number of real-world objects, but they quickly realized that the app\u2019s thousands of animations required a broader arsenal of sounds \u2014 so Miller went on a hunt. \u201cI got wooden blocks, pots from the kitchen, stuff I bought at a local thrift store,\u201d Miller says, pointing to a boxes of \u201cFoley objects\u201d in the background of his home studio. \u201cI\u2019d just walk into a music store and start pinging on things.\u201d <\/p>\n

His biggest challenge came in the app\u2019s \u201cmusical blobs\u201d section, an abstract playspace of movable shapes not unlike that lava lamp you had in college. \u201cWe wanted to do something musical,\u201d Huybreghts says, \u201cbut every kids\u2019 app that musical has a figurative aspect, where it\u2019s a person or animal singing or using visual recognizable instruments.\u201d <\/p>\n

The answer lay in the abstract. \u201cA musical blob is a completely new idea,\u201d Miller says. \u201cA lot has to come together for that to work.\u201d For instance: The color blue is always a C, while circles (the simplest of shapes) are represented by a single sine wave (the simplest of sounds). \u201cThere needs to be a consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/div>\n

Miller also found room for a little play, however: One of his favorite effects involves a dung beetle that raises its back legs and rolls the dung away. \u201cThat rolling sound is just me rolling over the edges of a soup can,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cWhen we can be literal, we\u2019re literal. But it\u2019s fun to throw curveballs too.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a way, Pok Pok Playroom<\/em> is a curveball of its own, something that stands out by virtue of its simplicity. \u201cWe\u2019re people, we\u2019re not computers building this,\u201d says Huybreghts. \u201cIt\u2019s not vector art. It\u2019s all hand-drawn and hand-animated. We\u2019re not a giant, polished company. You can really see everyone\u2019s impression, everyone\u2019s mark, on every single thing they make in the app.\u201d <\/p>\n

Learn more about Pok Pok Playroom<\/a><\/p>\n

Download Pok Pok Playroom from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the husband-and-wife team of Esther Huybreghts and Mathijs Demaeght first began dreaming up Pok Pok Playroom, they made a solemn vow: parents shouldn’t need to mute the app in a restaurant. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want media and jingles and jangles that get stuck in your head,\u201d Huybreghts laughs. \u201cWe wanted a quieter experience.\u201d To the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple-developer-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}