{"id":134400,"date":"2023-06-06T01:00:52","date_gmt":"2023-06-06T01:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/news\/?id=nzd48pl9"},"modified":"2023-06-06T01:00:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T01:00:52","slug":"behind-the-design-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2023\/06\/06\/behind-the-design-universe\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Design: Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

As a kid, Universe<\/em> founder Joseph Cohen loved nearly everything about the internet: how it brought people together, created avenues for his twin passions of creativity and commerce, and democratized the flow of information. \u201cI grew up in New York,\u201d Cohen says, \u201cbut I like to say that I really grew up on the internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Cohen\u2019s passion is still the internet \u2014 but he\u2019s no longer just living in it. He\u2019s striving to improve it. \u201cOur goal is making this technology available to everybody,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

\"The<\/div>\n

Launched in 2017, the powerful, versatile, and almost unbelievably simple Universe<\/em> makes creating a website as easy as building with blocks. The app operates on a grid system. To create a site, add blocks to the grid, and to edit a site, move those blocks around. No knowledge of coding, design, or publishing is necessary \u2014 Universe<\/em> even handles the process of acquiring and publishing to specific domain names. The app doesn\u2019t just remove barriers, it bulldozes them. And today, Universe<\/em> currently powers storefronts, artist portfolios, musician pages, community group hubs, personal web presences, and everything in between.<\/p>\n

In the past year, Universe<\/em> empowered more people than ever with a series of accessibility upgrades directly inspired by people\u2019s feedback. In one example, a high-school student in California who is blind reached out to ask for better VoiceOver support \u2014 and the Universe<\/em> team quickly came up with an elegant idea.<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/div>\n

\u201cWe learned that the grid system we designed is perfectly fitted to screen readers,\u201d he says. \u201cVoiceOver works by reading from the top left of the page, so when you have a grid-based coordinate system, it will walk right through what\u2019s on the screen. It\u2019ll say, \u2018OK, in position one and two, you have an image of flowers,\u2019 and so forth.\u201d <\/p>\n

The team refined the feature by working closely with a number of people who are blind or have low vision \u2014 many of whom have Universe<\/em>-created sites online right now. And they kept going, adding Dynamic Type to scale text as well as accessibility upgrades to the app\u2019s general navigation, settings, audience metrics, and more. <\/p>\n

\"*Universe\u2019s*<\/div>\n

The team’s latest project aims to make it even easier for anyone to get started with web design. Cohen and team are working on an AI feature that will instantly generate or refine a custom website based on natural language descriptions. Tell Universe<\/em>, \u201cMake a pink site with sparkles for my custom nail business in Chicago,\u201d and the results will appear in seconds. <\/p>\n

\n

Our goal is making this technology available to everybody.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Joseph Cohen, Universe<\/em> founder<\/p>\n

<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt\u2019ll be a dialogue; it\u2019s not a one-way street,\u201d says Cohen. \u201cYou can still edit your site manually, or you can ask it to change the theme or background color.\u201d (The AI designer is named GUS, both because it stands for \u201cgenerative Universe<\/em> sites\u201d and because Universe<\/em> employs a very skilled designer named Gus. \u201cWe have to call him Human Gus now,\u201d laughs Cohen.) <\/p>\n

Cohen plans to build the AI feature \u201cin public,\u201d releasing regular video updates about the team\u2019s progress as part of a way to garner people\u2019s feedback on the fly. It\u2019s another example of his drive to make the app \u2014 and the internet \u2014 more open to everyone. \u201cI still live in New York, and the best part of New York is that it\u2019s incredibly diverse,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s gritty and organic and very human. I think the internet can look like that \u2014 but you need great tools to enable it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

Download Universe – Website Builder from the App Store<\/a><\/p>\n

Behind the Design is a series that explores design practices and philosophies from each of the winners of the 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 2023 Behind the Design series<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a kid, Universe founder Joseph Cohen loved nearly everything about the internet: how it brought people together, created avenues for his twin passions of creativity and commerce, and democratized the flow of information. \u201cI grew up in New York,\u201d Cohen says, \u201cbut I like to say that I really grew up on the internet.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134400","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\/134400","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=134400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}