Serenity Caldwell

Helping developers and creators design for visionOS at . Find me @settern on the other places.

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

If you’re a creator or developer working on an interactive experience or you have questions about how you can best tell stories or design experiences with Apple Vision Pro, hit me up! Very much here to help.

[App Store @AppStore]

Congratulations to the 2026 #AppleDesignAwards winners!

The ADAs recognize apps and games that demonstrate outstanding technical achievement and improve people’s lives in meaningful ways. #WWDC26

🥁 and the awards go to: https://t.co/dEHrzCu0qe

[Jip @jipvandervelde]

grug is probably the first Apple Design Award winner built by two designers using Codex to write the code.

We didn't prompt "build me an award-winning app, make no mistakes.” It did not wake up one morning and decide the world needed grug. We did. We wanted to build it and AI was the tool that helped us take it all the way there.

Ever since we started building with AI a few years ago, we got bolder. You stop killing ideas just because they sound too hard to build. You get weirder when trying things becomes cheap enough to be silly again. You start following the strange little thought further than you normally would.

That is how grug happened.

AI can write your code. It can help you move fast. It can make impossible things feel possible.

But it cannot care. It cannot make your app memorable. It cannot make your app feel like it has a soul.

You have to bring the taste. You have to stay incredibly close. You have to take small steps, make thousands of tiny decisions, throw away good-enough work to get to your best work, and protect the thing that made the idea worth building in the first place.

grug would not have been this memorable if we didn't have Codex to go all-in on all the crazy ideas we had. If we had not decided to make the whole thing hand-drawn. If we had not spent days and nights obsessing over every detail, every animation, every interaction, every tiny bit of weirdness.

That is the difference between slop and something with a soul.

And I think that is why this award means so much to us. Not because what we were able to do using AI to build grug, but because Apple recognized the care we put inside all the weirdness.

For the past 15 years, so many of our ideas stopped at the mockup. They were too weird, too small, too hard to explain, too expensive to build, too unlikely to survive a meeting. Now designers like us can build the fun little things. Designers like us can ship the crazy ideas. Designers like us can make unreasonable little things and see if the world cares.

There are plenty of people who do not get grug. That is totally fine.

We do not try to build for everyone, because when you do you end up building for no-one. The people who get grug really get it. And if it makes their morning feel a little lighter, that is all that matters to us.

Make the weird thing. The right people will find it.

grug no wait for permission.

grug back sun rise.

[Linda Dong 🍉 @lindadong]

Calling all designers who are skilled in design systems, production design and have a penchant for public speaking. We've got an opening on the Apple Design Evangelism team!

This person will lead the creation and maintenance of the Apple Design Resources and do all the other fun stuff we get to do as well.

👉Apply here: https://t.co/VS321lDWAJ

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

Want to learn more about how designers are implementing Liquid Glass and the new design? Apply to come to the Developer Center in Cupertino on November 18! We'll also have a panel discussion with Apple designers and a mixer — hope to see you there. ❤️

https://t.co/5E899pcIDt

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

In the NYC area and working on a visionOS app, game, or experience? I'll be out there December 2–4 for some visionOS workshops and would love to meet with you and hear about your projects!

Sign up for the workshop here: https://t.co/ircWdsAeAO

[Linda Dong 🍉 @lindadong]

Okay! Here are the tools we’ve got for you to design with Liquid Glass and the new design system.

🎨 Sketch Libraries – https://t.co/QBtrEDJ764

🔜 Figma Libraries – Coming soon!

🎼 Icon Composer App – https://t.co/PaSZES8Tdd

📚 HIG – We updated like every page! https://t.co/S4oAjrjzNU

🎬 Videos – start with Meet Liquid Glass https://t.co/wrB8y2WKbU

[Azad Balabanian @Azadux]

Apple now supports “dynamic masks” for videos, meaning

You can have a video change its aspect ratios without any black bars

Movies, especially IMAX ones on Vision Pro should use this when switching b/w scope and expanded AR

[Sketch @sketch]

@Apple If (like us) you’re making a start on your Mac app’s redesign here’s an official UI Library for macOS 26 ↓ https://t.co/Nm9xBqjijU

[Sketch @sketch]

We’re all caught up on #WWDC25 and ready to get to work, right? Here’s an iOS 26 UI Library from @apple to get you started ↓ https://t.co/9nCH4L8SjV (But that’s not all! 🧵)

[Alena Tochilkina @A__Tochilkina]

Thrilled to share the feature we’ve been working on this year — object manipulation! Can’t wait to see all the amazing ways it’ll be used in apps. #WWDC25

To learn how to add interactive manipulation to you app, check out this talk https://t.co/eRisA5IWuh!

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

Making an immersive environment or portal experience for Vision Pro? You should watch this session. Tips on optimizing geometry, textures, and packaging for USD — and we’re including a Houdini toolkit to help you optimize your own environments!

https://t.co/On2SC1O1j3

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

@dreamwieber You’ll love these. :)

https://t.co/kxpuWaSUNs

https://t.co/RfmdqsrlMF

[App Store @AppStore]

The winners have arrived! 🏆

We’re thrilled to present the 2025 #AppleDesignAwards winners.
#WWDC25

Check out the year’s best in app and game design: https://t.co/vLpVNe2Z0Y

[Shubham Kedia @kediashubham]

Thrilled to share the project we’ve been working on for the past year!

Liquid Glass is a flexible material that constantly adapts to its size and environment, and lays the foundation for a unified design language across all our platforms.

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

Immersive creators: lots to love for you in visionOS 26! We’ve got FOUR new sessions on immersive media and samples that show you how to add spatial video, Wide FOV, 180/360 via APMP, and Apple Immersive Video into your own app.

Start here: https://t.co/uoCALAIZ0i

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

@benz145 We’ve got a session that goes a bit deeper into each format here, and a live group lab for immersive video technologies on Friday! https://t.co/uoCALAIZ0i

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

@SaudTweet @iMore Hahaha not me this year! But still great. :)

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

Lots of things that we’ve been working on to hype for you all this week, but Petite Asteroids, a sample game made entirely in RealityKit, is VERY high up on my list: https://t.co/jOTlaT0iLf

[Serenity Caldwell @settern]

Happy WWDC week, folks! LOTS of cool new features for designers, developers, and creators in visionOS 26 — hope to chat with some of you this week about them all!

[Jonathan Ravasz @jonathan_ravasz]

widgets are coming to visionOS — with a new three-dimensional style.

check out our session with @moritzvv to bring your existing widgets to visionOS and design native ones to take full advantage of the platform’s spatial and visual capabilities.

https://t.co/Ajtg7j9HOi

#WWDC25