As an ongoing tradition, here's my reflection on this year's project/submission.
Though I always say "start early for your Swift Student Challenge project," that has never been the case; Again, despite starting to plan everything out on the living room glass door with a whiteboard pen, I didn't start actually working on a project until Apple officially announced. Even once it's announced and I had an entire spring break to work on it, I did not. My original project idea was more elaborate, more impactful, but I quickly realized it's not possible to finish with the remaining few days that I have. Instead, I chose this easier one that could be adapted based on a combination of a few Apple Sample Code projects:
Still, if not for the 1-day extension due to Apple's server problem, I would not have had enough time to finish this project at all. So, please start early if you can, preferably right after the WWDC week.
I think I do need to give attributions to the video See in complete darkness with touch by Stuff Made Here on YouTube, though our approach to things is quite different. Instead of using tactile feedback that requires additional hardware, I choose to explore the avenue of spatial sound feedback. If the user has hearing abilities, mine would be more intuitive and direct feedback. I really hope to bring this to a standalone app that could be used to empower people with reduced vision, but unfortunately, I may not have the time to do so. However, do let me know if you are working on something similar that I could jump on board. Speaking of board, here's my whiteboard planning for this project:
To be honest, I'm not as excited as when I was working on WWDC 17/18. I still remember the results were released sometime around my birthday in those years, and I was really anxious in checking the results. But now there are so many other things going on, I really don't have enough time to do everything that I'm interested in, this challenge really has a lower priority than my school work, teaching assistant work, etc.. Nonetheless, I learned quite a lot of Apple APIs during this process, and I think I'll keep doing it so I stay in the loop of iOS development involving novel technologies.
I do still have the passion for CS (education), it's just that I no longer have the energy to write 1000 words to explain it. And really, I never enjoyed the writing process for it takes a considerable amount of time, so I'm going to end my rumbling here. Now, back to my homework that's due tonight that I haven't started.
Previous Submissions
WWDC20Swifty Podcast Editor (Rejected)WWDC19Accessibility (Rejected)WWDC18Pong Hau K'i (Accepted)WWDC17Swifty Karel (Accepted)