Diploma in Apple Development 🍎👩🏻‍💻: Spatial One: Lecture 1: Introduction to the Spatial One unit.
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Hi!

First, don't forget to confirm your attendance using the Seats Mobile app!

Second, I'm going to start every lecture with a meditation from the fantastic Sitting Still Like a Frog book, all read by Myla Kabat-Zinn. If you don't want to participate that's completely fine.

What are we going to be doing in Spatial One? We are going to be using Apple's resources (particularly around SwiftUI) to make prototype for a whole Vision Pro app, in teams. The brief is all around care. You need to make a caring app. But caring for who? How? Could it be around sharing important information? Which communities do you already care about or for? We'll talk about this more later.

In the second half of the year I'll teach you Spatial Two. It's solo brief around play - perhaps this could be around making joyful interaction? You'll be researching the Swift you need with me along the way. Just like making a real app in the real world.

BTW, the idea of the playful and caring approach comes from this amazing presentation from David Graeber (RIP).

Throughout, we are going to be using the App Design Workbook - use this to develop your group and solo apps. This should form the skeleton of the structure of your final presentations for both units. Make sure to download it today!

Co-operation is key! This is what it's going to be like when you make apps after graduation.

Let's go through the Block One lectures in Spatial One.

Some real world reference and inspiration:

• Have you all worked your way through The Steve Jobs archive? If so, what did you think?
• The Apple Design Awards are given every year at WWDC.
• How to make the most satisfying checkbox in the world. I want you to be going to this level of thought and consideration on your apps.
• Have you looked in the online and offline book section of the external resources section of the wiki yet?. I'd really recommend reading Dawn of the New Everything by Jaron Lanier. Great history of Virtual Reality from the person that popularised the term.
• The Apple Style Guide is an example of the level of care that Apple goes to.
• Marc Kerstein makes incredibly expensive iPhone apps for magicians to use. What apps could you specialise in?
• Eran Hilleli makes lots of interesting things. His app studio is called Iorama.
• A report into How Apple is Organised for Innovation.
• Calculating Empires is an AMAZING website that puts all technology into context.

For the rest of this first lecture, let's talk about the Spatial One brief. But first, let's put you into groups. I think 5 groups of 3 people? Let's add the groups to the People on this course page. How many of you have filled them out?

The brief is all around care. You need to make a caring app. But caring for who? How? Could it be around sharing important information? Which communities do you already care about or for? Why is it important to share this information spatially?

To be clear, I'm not expecting you to make a complete app - that's for the second half of the year, launching at least on Apple's app testing platform: TestFlight. The aim is to work like Apple works, building the prototype of an app in a group, with as much physical and code experiments as possible - not presentations, rather demonstrations and then discussion about the actual thing, not "the vision".

You are going to build the prototypes for your app in paper (more about this next week) and in code using RealityKit and Reality Composer Pro. Lets explore those links together.

Next, I'd like to introduce you to an artist and take you through their recent syllabus on VR/AR fundamentals.

I first became aware of Michael Naimark's work through his essay First Word Art / Last Word Art. I'd really recommend going through his collected projects when you have a moment.

Michael recently taught a course on "VR/AR fundamentals" at NYU Shanghai. As he mentions in the introduction: "They’re meant to be fast, brief, holistic, and accessible to non-engineers". Let's spend the next 45 minutes reviewing them - please take time to do this for yourself before the next lecture!

• Prologue
• 1) Audiovisual Resolution and Fidelity
• 2) Audiovisual Spatiality & Immersion
• 3) Other Senses (Touch, Smell, Taste, Mind)
• 4) Input & Interactivity
• 5) Live & Social + Epilogue

Next, let's take a look at the Apple Developer Design homepage, the Design Pathway and the VisionOS pathway. Let's take a particular look at the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) and particularly the the HIG section on Designing for VisionOS. Before finishing with a video, let's take a look at Apple's design resources - particularly SF Symbols!

Let's finish with a video from WWDC:
"The Qualities of Great Design" (55 mins)
"Great Design isn't magic, it is crafted with care by real people. Explore the characteristics of great design through the voices of designers from Apple and our developer community. Learn how they take inspiration from everyday life, conceive and refine ideas, and push themselves to design apps and games that can stand the test of time."

Next time, I expect you to arrive in your groups with at least one and a maximum of three page 9's from the App Design Workbook. You'll have a minute to present each question or challenge next week. Let's take a quick look at this slide together before we finish for today.
In addition, please review all of the content from today's lecture.
N.B. this will be the "rhythm" of Spatial One - a group presentation on your group's progress every two weeks. You should make your presentations in Keynote - the format of your final submission. Mark that date in your diary now!

Thanks!
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