As part of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple presents an exciting challenge to students worldwide: design a unique app playground using the Swift coding language. In a remarkable move, Apple has expanded the number of winners from the previous 350 to 375 this year, allowing even more students to participate and gain recognition for their creativity and innovative thinking.
“We are amazed by the talent we see from the young developers who enter our Swift Student Challenge,” said Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “This year’s submissions demonstrated not only the next generation’s commitment to building tools that will improve our lives, but also a willingness to embrace new technologies and tools, and deploy them in original and creative ways.”
As WWDC23 commences on June 5, the challenge winners will join virtually and in person to witness the keynote, events, labs, and a wide array of activities tailored for the global Apple developer community. Hailing from over 30 countries and regions, their app playgrounds span diverse domains such as healthcare, sports, entertainment, and the environment. Yet, all these winners share a common thread: utilizing coding to share their passions with the world. For Asmi Jain, Yemi Agesin, and Marta Michelle Caliendo, who are first-time winners, coding represents not only a unique career path but also an opportunity to make a positive impact on others’ lives.
During her time at Medi-Caps University in Indore, India, Asmi Jain, a 20-year-old student, learned about her friend’s uncle who had undergone brain surgery. Unfortunately, the surgery had left him with eye misalignment and facial paralysis.
Motivated by the situation, Jain took proactive measures and created a winning app playground. Her design involved tracking the user’s eye movements while they attempted to follow a ball moving across the screen. The primary goal of the playground is to enhance the strength of the eye muscles. Although Jain drew inspiration from her friend’s uncle, she aspires for the app to benefit individuals with diverse eye conditions and injuries.
“It was important for me to create an app playground that could positively impact the lives of people like him,” says Jain. “My next goal is to get feedback and make sure it’s effective and user-friendly, and then release it on the App Store. Ultimately, I want to expand it so that it helps strengthen all of the muscles in the face, and I hope it can one day serve as a therapy tool that people like my friend’s uncle can use at their own pace.”
Jain’s inclination to utilize coding for problem-solving in the healthcare sector stems from her extensive experience in volunteering and assisting others. In addition, she co-founded a forum at her university alongside fellow students, providing a support system for their peers to tackle challenging coding problems. Through this initiative, Jain and her colleagues aimed to foster a collaborative environment where students could seek guidance and overcome obstacles together.
“When you feel as though you’re part of something bigger, it motivates you and drives you to do better,” says Jain. “Coding lets me create things that help my friends and my community. And it gives me a sense of independence that is very empowering.”
For many young people, moving to different countries while growing up would be a burden, but 21-year-old Yemi Agesin saw it as a blessing. His family lived in Germany, Nigeria, Belgium, and England before returning to the United States when he was a teenager.
“You learn so much about the world when you move around,” says Agesin, who starts his final year at Kennesaw State University in Georgia this fall. “I think that really helps me because when I’m building things, I always try to consider and design for a wide range of perspectives.”
Agesin’s winning app playground is a first-person baseball game that alludes to two of his passions: sports and filmmaking. They foreshadow not only the next few months — he’s currently writing a film about a baseball player that he will produce this summer — but also his future goals.
“By using code, I can build worlds that people can use, and at the same time, build a career for myself that brings together my passions. I feel blessed and lucky that I live in a time and age where I can do that.”
“Coding gives me the freedom to feel like an artist — my canvas is the code editor, and my brush is the keyboard,” says Agesin. “For my next two projects, I’m designing a sports game where you compete against other players in real time in a team setting. And I’m also planning an app that will use augmented reality to help filmmakers visualise their graphics and effects while they’re shooting on iPhone.”
It’s no surprise that ARKit and RealityKit are what Agesin most looks forward to learning about when he attends WWDC23. He’s eager to add them to his growing toolbox and discover how they can help him transform his ideas into apps that make a difference.
“By using code, I can build worlds that people can use, and at the same time, build a career for myself that brings together my passions,” says Agesin. “I feel blessed and lucky that I live in a time and age where I can do that.”
For 25-year-old Marta Michelle Caliendo, her passion for paleontology — the scientific study of life through fossils — isn’t so much about the past, as it is the future.
“Dinosaurs should be a constant reminder to all of us to preserve biodiversity,” says Caliendo, who is studying at the Apple Developer Academy in Naples while also pursuing a natural sciences degree at the University of Naples Federico II. “Coding helps me find new ways to express and share that message with others.”
Caliendo’s winning app playground is a memory game featuring anatomically correct pictures of dinosaur fossils that she drew in Procreate on iPad, made all the more impressive because she only learned Swift in September.
“My first experience with Swift was when I started at the academy, and it was beautiful because it was so intuitive and simple,” says Caliendo. “I really love this programming language because it lets me share a part of my personality through my code.”
As for the future, Caliendo wants to build apps that help protect animals and the natural environment — she’s especially interested in reptiles and amphibians. It’s what led her to start planning an app that will help scientists and volunteers monitor and safeguard sea turtle nests along Italy’s coast.
“I study the animals we’ve lost to help protect the ones we still have,” says Caliendo. “We all have an opportunity to positively change things in the world, and I see technology and coding as the tools I can use to do that.”
Apple is proud to support and uplift the next generation of developers, creators, and entrepreneurs through its annual WWDC student program. Over the past three decades, thousands of students have built successful careers in technology, founded startups, and created organisations focused on democratising technology and using it to build a better future.
