"I know there's a saying in China: Women hold up half the sky. I like the way this phrase is expressed. Susan Prescott, Apple's vice president of global developer relations and corporate and educational marketing, said of the app development teams she met from China.
Meng Shichao and Shi Shuyuan of the "Picking Up Memories" team
She's talking about the teams that have just won the final prize at the Mobile App Innovation Competition, a computer competition at Chinese universities. As an application development competition that has been held for six sessions and is mainly based on school students, this year's competition has attracted more than 4200 students, 1472 teams have registered to participate, 1167 valid works in the preliminary competition, and finally 59 works have entered the finals.
"I'm excited to see a lot of young women in China learning to code and winning awards in mobile app competitions and elsewhere." Susan said she saw that this year's teams from China had all-female teams, and there was a team with only one male. When it comes to the profession of programmer, most people probably think of men wearing plaid shirts, glasses, laptops, and a little bald on the top of their heads, which is a typical stereotype of this era. In fact, no matter what era, there were never many women willing to make programming and developing software a profession, and even the world's first programmer, Augusta Ada Byron, was a talented woman, the daughter of the poet Byron, but took a completely different path from her father- and devoted herself to mathematical research with great enthusiasm, and the algorithms she wrote were recognized as the world's earliest computer programs and software.
What is the difference between women and young people as app developers? From the winning works of the competition, you may be able to see one or two.
In this competition, the entries cover a wide range of topics, involving smart medical care, social responsibility, traditional culture protection, sports, learning, convenient life for special groups and other fields. In the end, the work "Shu'er" from Zhejiang University won the Most Innovative Award & First Prize, which is an "electronic pet" that integrates social attributes and self-life projection; the work "Instant Shooting and Singing" from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Wuhan Textile University, the work "Memory Master" from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and the work "Picking Memories - Early Screening Application of Cognitive Impairment" from Shanghai Jiao Tong University won the first prize. "ARCT - Creating a New Horizon for the City" from Zhejiang University won the first prize of this year's newly added AR Circuit. Flowers of Voice from East China University of Science and Technology and Memories from Shanghai Jiao Tong University won the Social Innovation Award. Looking closely at its content, we can find that the points of concern of these works are cut from many details of life, and some are based on the needs of some special groups, which fully reflect the warmth and humanization of science and technology.
The ui for the application of The Squire
For example, the "little pet" of "Shu'er" is more like another "self" living in the virtual world. When the owner completes the daily exercise goal, the "Shu'er" will also become full of vitality; if the owner stays up late, it will grow "dark circles". By raising such an electronic pet, it is possible to help owners develop good living habits in a pleasant experience.
The promotion interface of "Picking Up Memories"
The APP called "Picking Up Memories - Cognitive Impairment Early Screening Application" is a game-based software to help the elderly do early screening for Alzheimer's disease. The development team came from students from the School of Design of Shanghai Jiao Tong University – none of whom had the relevant experience in developing procedures, but gave full play to their strengths and presented the screening interface in a hand-drawn way. In addition, the development team also went to Shanghai Sixth People's Hospital, through in-depth interviews with clinical experts, based on three professional ability assessments and tests for Alzheimer's diagnosis, designed three game levels to assist in diagnosis and assessment of whether the elderly need early treatment.
Susan said: "Apple believes that education is a force for equity, we provide opportunities for students to explore and develop new skills, and we believe that programming is critical to students' futures. "As a tech company, encouraging more people to try and learn programming is an important way for Apple to invest in education — not just for computer students involved, but for all those interested in programming." Since 2018, the Mobile Application Innovation Competition has set up the "National Primary and Secondary School SwiftPlaygrounds Creative Display Activity" as a sub-module, aiming to encourage primary and secondary school students across the country to use SwiftPlaygrounds to carry out project-based learning, and this year's primary and secondary school SwiftPlaygrounds Creative Display Activities have more than 70 teams from primary and secondary school students across the country registered to participate.