Apple puts focus on WWDC22 Swift Student Challenge winners

All three teens built apps that help solve problems in their communities

As WWDC looms, Apple has announced three winners of its Swift Student Challenge, showcasing apps that help solve problems in the communities the winners come from. It announced three of the winners in a similar way before.

In a short profile piece, the company talks about first-time participants Jones Mays II, Angelina Tsuboi, and Josh Tint. All three teens built apps that help solve problems in their communities and have been selected among more than 350 students from 40 countries and regions as 2022 challenge winners.

The three young developers built the following apps using Swift Playgrounds:

Jones Mays II

When Jones Mays II, 17, designed his app called Ivy, he found inspiration in his own roots:

“My grandfather had a garden that he loved, and he grew so much food that he just allowed people from the community to come in and grab what they needed,” said Mays, who is about to start his senior year of high school in Houston, Texas. “Even though he couldn’t walk at the end of his life, he used to point and that’s where I’d put down the seeds for him. But we always had to try to get rid of the kudzu vine — it was an ongoing fight.”

Mays created an app that honored his grandfather, who passed away a few years ago, by helping other gardeners identify and get rid of invasive plants like kudzu. This summer, Jones is going to be helping others learn programming languages like Swift.

“I’ll be teaching the next generation of students what it means to learn computer science,” said Mays. “Because I truly believe that when you’re able to learn computer science, you are able to apply that to so many other fields.”

Angelina Tsubo

Sixteen-year-old Angelina Tsuboi, who lives in Redondo Beach, California, is quite productive. In addition to her winning Swift Playgrounds submission that teaches the basics of CPR, she also helped build a prototype that monitors air quality, created a website to help search and rescue organizations, and designed a school communication program that won the Congressional App Challenge in her district.

“Life is riddled with problems — everyone is struggling with at least one thing,” said Tsuboi. “And programming filled me with this sense of hope. It gave me a way to help identify problems that people in my community or my friends were facing and use my skill set to help them.”

The project that’s closest to her heart is an app called Lilac, which she launched on the App Store in March. “My mom is a single mother and she’s from Japan,” said Tsuboi. “When she came here, she had problems with the language, so I made an app where you can find resources such as childcare or housing or grant opportunities, and translators in the community to help you connect with them.”

Josh Tint

Nineteen-year-old Josh Tint from Tucson, Arizona just finished his freshman year as a linguistics student at Arizona State University. He studies lavender linguistics, which is the study of the language used by the LGBTQ+ community. His app enables people who are questioning their gender identity to try different pronouns.

“An algorithm will insert different pronouns into pieces of sample text,” said Tint. “You can swipe through the sample text — left or right to indicate whether you like it or not — to get a feel for whether you think a certain gender pronoun matches your identity.”

The inspiration for the app came from Tint’s own journey. “I’ve questioned my gender identity and so I know there aren’t many resources out there to help with that,” said Tint.

In the future, Tint wants to use his knowledge of linguistics and programming to design algorithms that help mitigate bias.

More on the three young developers here.

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