The App Design Oscars take place once a year during Apple’s WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) event, and in 2022, two Canadian teams were nominated for awards.
There are several categories for both games and applications in the program, and the Montreal-based Transit application was nominated in the “Interaction” category.
In the “Visuals and Graphics” category, Lego Star Wars Castaways, exclusive to Apple Arcade, took home the top prize. This game is from Gameloft Studios in Montreal.
Lego Star Wars Castaways with creative director Jacques Durand
Lego Star Wars Castaways began with Jacques Durand’s vision of making a Lego game with an environment that looked more like the Lego movie and less like the popular Lego games from developer Travelers Tales.
Durand said he was the perfect protagonist of this project, as he is a self-proclaimed AFOL (adult Lego fan). He has been playing with Danish toys for years and even dipped his toes into the Lego stop motion scene.
However, turning an idea into a Lego Star Wars world game unlike anything that has been done before into a reality was a big task for his Gameloft studio. In this regard, Durand praised his Montreal team for being able to adapt and develop engine parts and optimizations to create a world that seems entirely made of Lego.
When asked what was the main element that made his team win, Durand replied with a simple, “It’s the love of the brick.”
He went on to say that his team is full of passionate Lego fans and developers who accepted this digital Lego challenge and worked hard to make sure that the game not only looks good, but also feels built in a way. realistic with Lego.
Transit and lead designer Sam Vermette
Before the event, I was able to catch up with Sam Vermette, the co-founder and lead designer of Transit, to talk about its application and what it meant for him and his team to be at the Design Awards.
If you’re unfamiliar with Transit, it’s a long-standing app. Since its redesign in 2018, it has been a fantastic example of easy-to-navigate interfaces that are simple enough to read and understand at a glance.
Vermette told me that the Transit team had been joking about the App Design Award nomination for years, so the fact that he was actually at the event was a dream come true. However, it did not happen by chance. Vermette is a great map nerd with training in industrial design. He decided to devote himself to the development of applications when the first iPhone equipped with an App Store was launched and realized the staff and essential that would become our devices.
Since then, he has taken a step back from development to focus more on application design, but these life experiences have been further reduced to help him create the easy-to-use Transit application that is still in use. so popular today.
When asked what makes Transit a top-notch design, Vermette said he’s proud of everything from the color-matching feature of local traffic to the easy-to-read design. However, Transit’s strong focus on one-handed use and the ability to slide back and forth is what it believes helped drive traffic to the top tier of traffic applications.
Unfortunately, Transit didn’t win in its category, but Vermette told me she was able to talk to the winning team designer, who said Transit was a major inspiration for Slopes, a ski and surfing app. of snow.