{"id":126657,"date":"2022-07-18T16:00:47","date_gmt":"2022-07-18T16:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=e409h6ja"},"modified":"2022-07-18T16:00:47","modified_gmt":"2022-07-18T16:00:47","slug":"behind-the-design-procreate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2022\/07\/18\/behind-the-design-procreate\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Procreate"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Procreate needs little introduction. For more than a decade, the world-class design app has served anyone looking to create high-caliber art: pro designers, calligraphers, influencers, schools making prom flyers, and pretty much everyone in between. Its ubiquity is equally matched by industry praise \u2014 in 2022, Procreate became the rare app to take home a second Apple Design Award, bookending its initial win back in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor that to happen again is humbling and disorienting and hugely energizing,\u201d said Claire d\u2019Este, Procreate\u2019s chief product officer. \u201cI feel like there\u2019s now a fire for us to keep pushing harder.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\u201cWe\u2019ve<\/p>\n
\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve always tried to keep the barrier to entry low,\u201d says Claire d\u2019Este, Procreate\u2019s chief product officer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Procreate\u2019s latest win came in the Inclusivity category; judges called out how the app expanded its accessibility support by adding features like motion filtering and color description notifications \u2014 all atop Procreate’s existing support for options like VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, and AssistiveTouch. Such additions are part of the natural evolution of an app that\u2019s well into its second decade, but they also speak to the app\u2019s guiding principle: Art is for everyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a poster on a wall,\u201d says Procreate CEO and co-founder James Cuda from Hobart, Tasmania, where the app\u2019s 60-member team is based. \u201cIt\u2019s a human condition to want to create. We\u2019re trying to amplify that. And as the app grows, we want people to grow with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n
\n

James Cuda, Procreate CEO and co-founder, says his design approach is to \u201cget in there, roll my sleeves up, and have a bit of a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Accessibility has been a Procreate priority since the app\u2019s launch back in March 2011. \u201cWe\u2019ve always tried to keep the barrier to entry low and have a friendly first experience,\u201d says d\u2019Este. \u201cYou can jump in and start drawing and it doesn’t feel at all intimidating.\u201d <\/p>\n

The app is also localized in 16 languages, though it refrains from using words as labels wherever possible so that it can remain easy to use in non-localized regions. \u201cIconography is a universal language,\u201d says Cuda. <\/p>\n

\u2018It must have been so simple!’<\/h3>\n

To add the motion filtering and color description notification features, Cuda, d\u2019Este, and the Procreate team stuck with an intricate and well-honed design strategy that\u2019s served them for years: Do it and find out what happens. \u201cWe’re sort of more like musicians than designers,\u201d says Cuda. \u201cWe go into a room, huddle around, and hammer things out.\u201d<\/p>\n

That approach has served Cuda his whole life. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a hacker,\u201d he laughs. \u201cI like to just get in there, roll my sleeves up, and have a bit of a mess.\u201d For the most part, that means no wireframes, no sketches, and not a lot of overthinking.<\/p>\n

\"Cuda<\/p>\n
\n

Cuda and the Procreate team take a stroll through their Tasmanian home base.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI did more mind-mapping back in the early days,\u201d he says, \u201cbut personally I got muddled in that process because it\u2019s such an abstract way of looking at things. The customer doesn\u2019t see a wireframe; they see a product, and it\u2019s much more meaningful when they can interact with that product. I just always found it easier to create pixel-perfect mockups \u2014 and Claire is great at hacking out quick examples of experience flows.\u201d <\/p>\n

To illustrate, Cuda shares the tale of Quick Shape, a Procreate feature that helps people draw perfect circles and other shapes. For quite a while, customers had been asking for analog tools \u2014 rules, protractors, and the like \u2014 but the Procreate team resisted the addition of buttons and menus. \u201cWe thought, \u2018Well, people don\u2019t really need more accessories, they\u2019re just trying to draw a circle.\u2019 So we devised a gesture. When you draw your circle or shape, you just hold it and the app figures out what you\u2019re trying to draw.\u201d <\/p>\n

It was an elegant fix that fit right into the app\u2019s existing interface \u2014 no extra buttons or menu dives required. \u201cThat was one of those really good breakthroughs,\u201d Cuda shares. \u201cIt\u2019s very intuitive, but it\u2019s not conventional.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n

We always want to add more functionality, but we don’t want the app to become overburdened.<\/p>\n

Claire d’Este<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even with their slightly unorthodox approach to brainstorming and creation, Procreate\u2019s UI and features still go through hundreds of iterations \u2014 Quick Shape took nearly three years to ship inside the app. \u201cMaking something simple is really complex,\u201d says Cuda. \u201cThe beauty of the product is its accessibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"d\u2019Este<\/p>\n
\n

d\u2019Este and the Procreate team like to surround themselves with inspiration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The challenge is to maintain that accessibility while growing with the times. \u201cWe always want to add more functionality, but we don’t want the app to become overburdened,\u201d says d\u2019Este. \u201cThe challenge is always: How do we keep that simplicity and those low barriers \u2014 but still give everyone the power they need to solve the problems they have?\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea for motion filtering \u2014 an expanded version of the app\u2019s Stabilization feature and one of the features that propelled the app to its ADA win \u2014 followed all those paths, and a few more. \u201cIf the customer is experiencing any kind of shakes or tremors as they’re creating, we filter those out so the customer creates a beautifully perfect line, just like they intended,\u201d says Cuda. \u201cIt feels like magic.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it didn\u2019t entirely start that way. The team first began exploring the idea through the app\u2019s existing Streamline feature, which designers and calligraphers use to create beautiful, curved strokes. \u201cWe thought, \u2018Why don\u2019t we start there? Why don\u2019t we turn up all the dials and see if it works for people who have any kind of tremors or motion issues?\u201d says Cuda. <\/p>\n

There was just one problem: It didn\u2019t work very well. \u201cWe had to scrap what we did and go back to the drawing board.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Procreate\u2019s<\/p>\n
\n

Procreate\u2019s motion filtering tool \u2014 found in the Pressure and Smoothing menu \u2014 was a big part of the app’s Apple Design Award win for inclusivity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The winning concept came from Lloyd Bottomley, the app\u2019s first engineer and currently the company\u2019s chief research officer. \u201cHe said, \u2018What if we use something like audio signal processing? That essentially modulates the peaks and troughs of audio. Can we use that in a different way to smooth out the strokes?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottomley worked for weeks, maybe months. \u201cIt was a long process!\u201d laughs Cuda. \u201cBut when I saw the demo actually working, I remember grabbing a Pencil and seeing if I could disrupt it,\u201d says Cuda. He couldn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

The foundation was there, and the team got together to start riffing on it. \u201cWe were all drawing with him, so we were able to add comments like, \u2018OK, so at this particular pressure level, could we smooth it out to this degree?\u2019 and such. It sounds so ephemeral. But it was a really lovely kind of back and forth that got us there.\u201d <\/p>\n

It\u2019s also something that can be used by anyone. \u201cIt started out trying to help a certain demographic,\u201d says Cuda, \u201cbut it\u2019s great for everyone. I turned it on for almost everything I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n
\n

The app\u2019s brush library offers something for artists of all stripes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In the end, the feature not only represented a cool technological achievement but also tied fundamentally into the app\u2019s mission. \u201cWhen we talk about \u2018Art is for everyone,\u2019 we think: Well, does this appeal to everyone? Does it work for everybody?\u201d says Cuda. \u201cI think a lot of people think design is the wallpaper that you put up once you build something, or even a blanket term for making anything visual. But it\u2019s really about solving problems. It\u2019s about interfacing with machines in a very human way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more about Procreate<\/a><\/p>\n

Download Procreate from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n

Behind the Design is a weekly series that explores design practices and philosophies from each of the 12 winners of the 2022 Apple Design Awards. In each story, we go behind the screens with the developers and designers of these award-winning apps and games to discover how they brought their remarkable creations to life.<\/em><\/p>\n

Explore more of the 2022 Behind the Design series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Procreate needs little introduction. For more than a decade, the world-class design app has served anyone looking to create high-caliber art: pro designers, calligraphers, influencers, schools making prom flyers, and pretty much everyone in between. Its ubiquity is equally matched by industry praise \u2014 in 2022, Procreate became the rare app to take home a second […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126657","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\/126657","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=126657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}