Here’s the story of how some bears led their creators straight to an Apple Design Award.
Bear Gratitude is a warm and welcoming title developed by the Australian husband and wife team of Isuru Wanasinghe and Nayomi Hettiarachchi.
Journaling apps just don’t get much cuter: Through prompts like “Today isn’t over yet,” “I’m literally a new you,” and “Congratulate someone,” the Swift-built app and its simple, hand-drawn mascots encourage people to get into the habit of celebrating accomplishments, encouraging introspection, and generating gratitude. “And gratitude doesn’t have to be about big moments like birthdays or anniversaries,” Wanasinghe says. “It can be as simple as having a hot cup of coffee in the morning.”
ADA FACT SHEET
Bear Gratitude
- Winner: Delight and Fun
- Available in: iOS, iPadOS, macOS
- Team size: 2
Download Bears Gratitude from the App Store
Wanasinghe is a veteran programmer who has run an after-school tutoring center in Sydney, Australia, for almost a decade. But the real spark for Bear Gratitude and his predecessor, bear countdowncame from Hettiarachchi, a Sri Lankan-born illustrator who focused on her hobby of drawing during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Wanasinghe is more direct. “Art is at the heart of everything we do,” he says.
Bear Gratitude was developed by the Australian husband and wife team of Isuru Wanasinghe and Nayomi Hettiarachchi.
In fact, art is the reason the app exists. As the months of the pandemic and the drawings piled up, Hettiarachchi and Wanasinghe became increasingly attached to their cartoon creations, enough to start considering how to share them with the world. The usual routes of social media appealed to him, but given Wanasinghe’s background, the idea of an app offered a stronger appeal.
“In many cases, you have an idea, you come up with a design, and then you do the actual development,” he says. “In our case it’s the other way around. Art drives everything.”
Art is at the heart of everything we do.
Isuru Wanasinghe, Bear Gratitude co-founder
With hundreds of drawings at their disposal, the couple began thinking about the types of applications that could house them. His first release was bear countdownwho used drawings to help people anticipate birthdays, holidays, and other notable moments. Countdown It was never intended to be a mass-market app; The pair didn’t even check their launch stats on App Store Connect. “We would have loved for 100 people to enjoy what Nayomi had drawn,” says Wanasinghe. “That’s where our heads were at.”
But Countdown was noticed by some influencers and became enough of a success that the couple began thinking about next steps. “We thought, well, we’ve given people a way to look forward,” Wanasinghe says. “How about you reflect on the day you just had?”
Hettiarachchi’s art samples receive a thorough inspection by one of his trusted associates.
Gratitude prevents the tender cast Countdownbut otherwise the app is a completely different beast. It was also designed in a way that Wanasinghe said was deliberately unusual. “Our design approach was almost eerily linear,” Wanasinghe says. “We didn’t design the app on purpose. We designed it in the same order that users experience it.”
Other unorthodox decisions followed, including the absence of a login screen. “We wanted people to dive right into the experience and start writing,” he says. Home screen diary prompts are presented through cards that users flip through by tapping left and right. “It’s definitely a non-standard user experience,” Wanasinghe says, “but we found time and time again that the first thing users did was flip through the cards.”
Our design approach was almost eerily linear. We didn’t design the app on purpose. We design it in the same order that users experience it.
Isuru Wanasinghe, Bear Gratitude co-founder
Another twist: The app’s prompts are written in the user’s voice, which Wanasinghe said was done to emphasize the personal nature of the app. “We wrote the app as if we were the only ones using it, which made it more relatable,” he says.
Then there are bears, which not only serve as a distinctive hook in a busy field, but also as a design anchor for their creators. “We’re always thinking, ‘Instead of trying to differentiate our app, how do we make it our own?’ We use apps all the time and we know how they behave. But here we try to distance ourselves from all that, think of it as a blank canvas and ask ourselves: ‘What do we want this experience to be?’”
First design sketches for Bear Gratitude Showcase collection of quick swipe cards.
Bear Gratitude is not a mindfulness app: Wanasinghe is careful to clarify that neither he nor Hettiarachchi are therapists or mental health professionals. “All we know are the trials and tribulations of life,” he says.
But those trials and tribulations have reached a bigger world. “People have said, ‘This is something I visit every day and it comforts me,'” Wanasinghe says. “We are so grateful that this is the way we choose to share art. We are connected to people’s lives in a meaningful way.”
Meet the winners of the Apple Design Award 2024
Behind the Design is a series that explores the design practices and philosophies of Apple Design Awards finalists and winners. 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 extraordinary creations to life.
