Apple Swift Student Challenge 2026 Submission
"In Their Shoes" is an iOS app playground designed to bridge the gap between assumption and understanding for invisible conditions like ADHD, deafness, and HIV. By combining isometric pixel art with perspective-taking narratives, the app challenges users' biases through discovery and interactive gameplay.
People often make assumptions about invisible conditions based on appearance, which can lead to stigma and isolation. The core objective of "In Their Shoes" is to build empathy not through lectures, but through gamified discovery.
Players step into the rooms of three different characters—Maya, Kai, and Alex—who are defined by their passions, not just their conditions.
- The Gameplay Loop: Players explore a friend's room, tap on everyday objects to find clues, and attempt to diagnose what their friend is living with.
- The Reveal: Most players guess incorrectly, forcing them to confront their own assumptions. The app then provides accessible "Myth vs. Reality" cards to replace stigma with understanding.
The app was built to balance a clean UI with immersive, interactive gameplay, keeping the entire footprint under 12 MB.
- SwiftUI: Handled the interface layer, navigation, home screens, and the diagnosis flow, allowing for rapid iteration on layouts.
- SpriteKit: Powered the interactive isometric room scenes, handling touch detection, sprite animation, and character movement.
- AVFoundation: Managed the audio system, notably implementing a low-pass filter in one of the rooms to simulate muffled hearing.
- Core Haptics: Provided tactile feedback on object interactions.
Accessibility was integrated into both the narrative and the UI design.
- Narrative Design: Alex's room is designed to reflect the reality of being Deaf, utilizing a muffled audio filter, a vibrating alarm clock, and a flashing doorbell.
- UI/UX Decisions: The app features large tap targets with pulsing indicators, high-contrast text, clear time displays, and text-based dialogue to ensure an approachable experience without exclusionary clinical design.
To accelerate development and asset generation, I integrated AI tools into my product workflow:
- Cursor AI & Claude: Utilized for project planning, architecture guidance, and as a coding assistant to write and debug Swift and SpriteKit code.
- Asset Generation: Character sprites and isometric room backgrounds were generated using AI imagery, which I then rigorously edited and refined in Figma to achieve a cohesive, warm pixel-art style. All UX design, educational content, and creative vision were entirely original.