Student wins Apple Swift challenge with caring eyes

SAN FRANCISCO — "Application development is more than just writing code. It is a form of creative expression, and I love the journey of building something from scratch," says Xu Tianyu, a Chinese university student who won Apple's 2025 Worldwide Developers Conference Swift Student Challenge.

Xu, a senior student at the Shanghai Institute of Technology, was among 350 students selected globally as winners of the 2025 challenge.

She was also one of 50 distinguished winners recognized for outstanding submissions and invited to Apple's Cupertino campus for a three-day experience during the WWDC week.

Xu says she participated in the competition for the first time with her Swift Playground project called SignBridge, which aims to address communication among people with and without hearing loss on campus.

When designing SignBridge, her primary goal was to create an intuitive and engaging experience for the users who are new to sign language.

"My university in Shanghai offers special education classes for students with hearing loss, where teachers rely on sign language interpreters during instruction. I noticed that, due to communication barriers, few students without hearing loss are able to directly communicate with students who have hearing loss, using sign language," Xu explains.

The Swift Student Challenge is part of the WWDC25, which took place from June 9 to 13, featuring keynote events, labs and workshops available online and free for millions of Apple developers. Each year, in the lead-up to WWDC, young people from around the world use Swift Playgrounds to showcase their coding passion and skills.

"For WWDC25, I'm particularly looking forward to learning more about Vision Pro development. With the arrival of the spatial computing era, I hope to expand my sign language learning application to this new platform, creating a more immersive learning experience," Xu says.

"I also focus on the latest advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence, and look forward to integrating these technologies into my app to improve sign language recognition accuracy and user experience."

Xu was excited to present her project to Apple CEO Tim Cook along with other student winners on June 8. She recalled receiving her first electronic device, an iPad 2, when she was 11 years old.

"Back then, as a child immersed in mobile games, I never imagined that one day my own creations would run on iPads. My long-term aspiration is to become an independent developer, as transforming creative ideas into real applications gives me a deep sense of fulfillment."

Cook says: "I was thrilled to meet Tianyu at Apple Park, where I got to see the inspiring work she's doing to make technology more accessible and lower communication barriers for the deaf community.

"Every time I visit China, I love meeting iOS developers who harness the power of technology to enrich people's lives. Tianyu is part of an incredible generation using their talent to improve people's lives and shape a better future, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next," Cook says.

In March, Apple announced it is accelerating support for the next generation of developers in China with a 30 million yuan ($4.2 million) donation to Zhejiang University. Apple will partner with the university, which is also the organizer of the Mobile Application Innovation Contest, to establish the Apple App Incubation Fund, offering training in the latest technologies.

The contest is celebrating its 10th anniversary since 2016. It has attracted more than 30,000 students from nearly 1,000 universities and helped hundreds of colleges and universities set up iOS clubs, according to Apple.

Xinhua