I have wanted an Apple Design Award for as long as I have been designing apps. It is the one award in this industry that is about craft, and for ten years it has been the thing I picture when I ask myself what good enough looks like. This May, the email came. Hearing Buddy was a 2026 Apple Design Award Finalist in Inclusivity. This is the story of what happened next.
The email
Of all the categories, Inclusivity is the one I would have picked. I am hard of hearing, and Hearing Buddy started as the app I needed in rooms where I could not follow the conversation. As a disabled female founder, inclusivity and accessibility are the backbone of everything I do, and the brand is a colorful expression of my disability pride. To be recognized for that, specifically, meant more than the award itself.
It was also personal. I went through my hearing loss journey with my real-life hearing buddy, Scott Krager. We built the app together, and now we were Finalists together. He is my biggest supporter in every part of my life, and the build that got us here was my best Liquid Glass work yet. I put my heart and soul into the interface. So we did what you do with news like that. We celebrated, and then we booked the trip. We were going to WWDC26.
Before Cupertino
The winners were announced a few days before the conference. Guitar Wiz took Inclusivity, and it earned it. I sent my congratulations and meant every word, because the bar in that category is exactly why the recognition means so much. Finalist is a title you keep, and we had a whole week in Cupertino ahead of us.
We landed and I did the only reasonable thing, which was take a Waymo to the hotel. The next morning I was up early for badge pickup and the WWDC26 swag, and then the week began.
The reception
The day before the keynote, Apple hosted a reception for every Finalist and winner. So much excellence in one photo. We got to showcase Hearing Buddy and talk to a bunch of people, and I loved sharing how Apple's latest technologies have changed my life in the most positive way, by helping me hear better in conversations.
Hearing Buddy was up on the Inclusivity Finalists display, which I am not sure I will ever get used to. We found the Inclusivity winner and got a photo with them. Of course, I took a picture with the ADA award, like I do every time I go to WWDC. It is my dream to win one.
Apple thought through every detail of the ADA experience, and I had so much fun that day with Scott.
The keynote
Then the keynote, and the State of the Union, where the Hearing Buddy logo showed up on screen. I still cannot believe that. Three announcements stood out. Apple Intelligence, SiriAI, and CoreAI, because we are following Apple's lead in the AI space and cannot wait to use these in Hearing Buddy. The child safety features, which would help us make a version of Hearing Buddy for kids. And the Liquid Glass improvements. We already had a Hearing Buddy build running on iOS 27, and it looked better with no coding needed.
That last part is what I keep coming back to. Apple listened to developer feedback and made real improvements. We cannot wait to start coding iOS 27 features and dive even deeper into our Liquid Glass designs.
The Observatory
The peak of the week came last. We were invited to demo Hearing Buddy in the Observatory at Apple Park, and walking in for the first time was the most beautiful architecture I have ever experienced.
Inside, we showed Hearing Buddy to Apple and to the other Finalists, one conversation at a time. We also pitched to the press and to some of the biggest content creators in tech, which meant explaining the app to people hearing about it for the first time, over and over, all day. We also met the founding team of Tiimo, who won App of the Year in 2025. It was the best week ever.
Coming home
I built Hearing Buddy because I needed it. Standing in the Observatory as a Finalist, with Scott, showing the app to the people who make the platform, is a week I will carry for a long time. The dream is still to win one. We will be back.
Apple's 2026 Apple Design Awards
Hearing Buddy is listed as a Finalist in the Inclusivity category on Apple's Design Awards page, in Apple's newsroom announcement of the 2026 winners, and in the App Store story Meet the 2026 Apple Design Award Finalists. Apple's description: "Created by a solo developer with hearing loss, Hearing Buddy is shaped by experience. The thoughtful app uses the Foundation Models framework and on-device speech-to-text features to quickly generate real-time captions and summaries of spoken conversations."
The posts this story comes from are on LinkedIn: the announcement, the badge event, the State of the Union, and the Observatory. Building something for the App Store and want it to stand out? Send me a note.