{"id":127735,"date":"2021-07-20T15:30:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T15:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=wg07z90y"},"modified":"2021-07-20T15:30:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T15:30:52","slug":"behind-the-design-loona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2021\/07\/20\/behind-the-design-loona\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Lo\u00f3na"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Illustration<\/div>\n

Andrew Yanchurevich\u2019s inspiration for Lo\u00f3na<\/em> came, appropriately enough, at night-night time. <\/p>\n

As a father of a 3-year-old son, Yanchurevich was well in the habit of reading bedtime stories nearly every night. One evening, he realized his son wasn\u2019t the only one getting drowsy. \u201cWhat worked well for him was also working for me,\u201d says Yanchurevich. \u201cAs I read, I forgot about my thoughts and my plans. My mind came down.\u201d <\/p>\n

While that night brought Yanchurevich pleasant drowsiness, it also sparked the beginnings of an idea: an app that paired the beauty of a great bedtime story with soothing interactive experiences to help you drift off to dreamland. Together with co-founder and former product designer Eugene Nevgen, they dreamt up a product as gorgeous as it is effective: Lo\u00f3na<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\"Drawing<\/div>\n

The app winds you down with \u201csleepscapes,\u201d interactive episodes designed to soothe your mind at the end of your day. \u201cPeople use their phones at bedtimes, so we wanted to give them a more meaningful way to do it,\u201d Yanchurevich says. \u201cYou can spend 20 or 30 minutes with Lo\u00f3na<\/em> and be ready to fall asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea, as Yanchurevich says, is to \u201crecreate this safe bubble from your childhood,\u201d just as he was doing for his son. In the introductory sleepscape \u201cThe Dragon\u2019s Shrine,\u201d you\u2019ll explore a beautifully rendered marble pagoda while an appropriately mellifluous voice guides you through calming tasks. As you progress through sleepscapes, you\u2019ll lose yourself in a fairytale kingdom, explore a dark forest, or simply cozy up to a crackling fire.<\/p>\n

Co-founder Nevgen says his goal with Lo\u00f3na<\/em> wasn\u2019t just to build a great mindfulness app, but to create \u201cthe most beautiful in the category.\u201d That\u2019s turned out to be a big job: There are more than 55 sleepscapes in the app, each of which took some 500 hours to build. <\/p>\n

\n

People use their phones at bedtimes, so we wanted to give them a more meaningful way to do it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Luckily, the minds behind Lo\u00f3na<\/em> had a unique blend of skill sets. Nevgen and Yanchurevich are former product designers; co-founder Sergey Gonchar is a veteran engineer (along with Nevgen, he launched the now-defunct face-filter app MSQRD); co-founder Dmitri Doryn has a background in 3D graphics and training as an architect; and sound designer Ivan Senkevich has a long history in audio. <\/p>\n

Sleepscape ideas range from esoteric notions like \u201cthe light of hope\u201d or \u201cthe luminous realm\u201d to something more concrete, like a Parisian park or a throwback Brooklyn. A bustling New York city may not be exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a relaxing place. \u201cGenerally, people expect to see rainbows or forests in an app that promotes relaxation and sleep,\u201d says Lo\u00f3na<\/em> CPO Mike Chernetsov, who leads the writing team. \u201cHere you\u2019ve got an old city building in the late evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

But part of the team\u2019s goal is expanding the idea of what a relaxing place can be. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to just do stereotypical places,\u201d Chernetsov says. \u201cSometimes, we want to show places from a totally different perspective. If you look (at \u2018Heartwarming Brooklyn\u2019), it refers to a feeling that resonates with everyone: nostalgia. When we\u2019re not feeling good, we all want a place to escape to, a moment where we can feel safe and secure. And from a visual standpoint, Brooklyn is really very soothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Conference<\/div>\n

Yanchurevich says the Brooklyn sleepscape is also easily one of the app\u2019s most popular. \u201cPeople have messaged us wanting the address to the building,\u201d he says. \u201cThey want to grab a pizza in that cafe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every soundscape the team creates involves this level of exploration and storytelling. While co-founder Doryn gets to work drafting a 3D model of the potential world, Chernetsov and the writing team are focused on exploring the narrative: What would bring you to this place? What would you do there? What sort of meditative activities would keep you the right level of engaged? It\u2019s not storytelling in the traditional sense, but the writers so have an advantage: they can plunge into Doryn\u2019s early sketches themselves to, as he says, \u201cfly around the scene to finish the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

We want to show places from a totally different perspective. If you look (at \u2018Heartwarming Brooklyn\u2019), it refers to a feeling that resonates with everyone: nostalgia. When we\u2019re not feeling good, we all want a place to escape to, a moment where we can feel safe and secure.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

While the story is coming together, the app\u2019s team of musicians and sound designers also get to work laying the sleepy sonic groundwork, much of which is recorded live in the team\u2019s hometown of Minsk, Belarus. \u201cI often come into my village to record,\u201d says Senkevich. \u201cThe region has a great natural sound.\u201d<\/p>\n

To create the appropriately somnolent aural environment, Senkevich often hits the road in search of animal noises, breezy forests, babbling rivers, and the buzz of insect life. \u201cSome of the sleepscapes are more cartoonish and some more realistic. But we always try to show that natural-ness of the sound.\u201d (Some sounds, he notes, did come from libraries. \u201cYou can\u2019t record the sea in Minsk,\u201d Senkevich says with a laugh.)<\/p>\n

Still, at the end of the day (well, the night), Lo\u00f3na<\/em>\u2019s goal is to get you to turn the app off. The key is to strike an artful balance between meditative activity and relaxation; if a sleepscape is working, you\u2019ll shut it down well before you\u2019re finished (which is OK, you can pick it tomorrow night). Doryn says that finding that tightrope-sized balance is not always easy. <\/p>\n

\"In<\/div>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an iterative process,\u201d Doryn says,\u201c and sometimes we do go too far. Our animation team always wants to do more. Something more beautiful, something more glowy and shiny and with lots of jiggling wiggling stuff in the scene,\u201d he laughs. <\/p>\n

To find that balance, Lo\u00f3na<\/em> trusts their team of testers, who interact, color, unpack, and play with each soundscape to make sure the worlds help lull their participants without distracting them. A sleepscape called The Rusty Rooster Inn, for example, initially featured dozens of roof tiles that needed to be individually lit; their testers found it too much, however, so the Lo\u00f3na<\/em> team went back to grouping tiles together. <\/p>\n

\"Illustrator<\/div>\n

Finding that balance, Doryn says, is a constant job. \u201cThere\u2019s no simple recipe, no silver bullet.\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s all responding to user feedback. We\u2019re constantly running tiny surveys, and always improving things from a technical and performance standpoint.\u201d<\/p>\n

With nearly 100 more sleepscapes in the works, Lo\u00f3na<\/em> is growing fast. From a creative standpoint, the team is working to craft an interconnected \u201cLo\u00f3na<\/em> universe,\u201d where elements, themes, and even Easter eggs pop up across the app\u2019s bank of sleepscapes. \u201cWe want to offer a journey to a whole universe of interconnected worlds,\u201d says Chernetsov. “We want you to find a place where you\u2019ll feel safe and secure, every night.”<\/p>\n

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

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

Andrew Yanchurevich\u2019s inspiration for Lo\u00f3na came, appropriately enough, at night-night time. As a father of a 3-year-old son, Yanchurevich was well in the habit of reading bedtime stories nearly every night. One evening, he realized his son wasn\u2019t the only one getting drowsy. \u201cWhat worked well for him was also working for me,\u201d says Yanchurevich. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127735","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\/127735","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=127735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}