With the speed at which technology is evolving, it’s no wonder that programming is one of the most sought-after and highest-paying careers in India. For 20-year-old Medi-Caps University student Asmi Jain, coding is more than just a skill – it’s a way of making a difference.
When she learned that her friend’s uncle had suffered from eye misalignment and facial paralysis after brain surgery, she decided to use her programming talent to create a solution. Her innovative playground app uses eye-tracking technology to help users exercise their eye muscles and improve coordination by following a moving ball on the screen.
Asmi Jain, who hails from Indore, created the app as part of an Apple Worldwide Developers Conference challenge, which the company hosts every year. It’s an initiative that sees many students compete to create an original app playground using the Swift coding language. This year, Apple increased the number of winners from the usual 350 to 375 so even more students could be included and recognized.
“It was important for me to create an app playground that could positively impact the lives of people like him,” Jain was quoted as saying in a press release. “My next goal is to get feedback and make sure it’s effective and user-friendly, and then release it on the App Store. Ultimately, I want to expand it so that it helps strengthen all of the muscles in the face, and I hope it can one day serve as a therapeutic tool that people like my friend’s uncle can use at their own pace.”
Jain added that her desire to use coding to solve problems in healthcare stems from the many years she spent volunteering to help those around her. She and a few other students also recently created a forum at her university so that their classmates had a support system for working through coding problems.
“When you feel as though you’re part of something bigger, it motivates you and drives you to do better,” says Jain. “Coding lets me create things that help my friends and my community. And it gives me a sense of independence that is very empowering.”
When WWDC 2023 kicks off on June 5, the winners will be among those attending the event virtually and in person to see the keynote, events, labs, and activities available this year to the global Apple developer community.
Asmi Jain is joined by two more winners of the Students Challenge event. Yemi Agesin from the US has designed a first-person baseball game that alludes to two of his passions — sports and filmmaking — and Marta Michelle Caliendo designed an anatomically correct memory game featuring pictures of dinosaur fossils that she drew in Procreate on iPad.