The second Huawei “Dream Cup” Developer Contest Finals recently took place in SUSTech’s First Research building lecture hall. Six finalists from the 12 original contestants gathered at the university campus to compete for Huawei‘s “Dream Cup” Developer Contest‘s top prize.

Huawei Consumer BG product line president He Gang, Amap senior vice president Dong Zhenyu, Shenzhen TV producer Xu Xiaoyuan, SUSTech’s Director of Residential College Han Wei and Computer Science Professor Yang Shuanghua attended the event as judges to evaluate each team. The contest was divided into two parts, the first during which the groups introduce their desktop themes, and the second during which they showcase their applications. Each submission is divided into three parts: the team’s display, the judges’ questions and the tutor’s canvassing. The judges score weighed 60% of the total score, while the audience had the chance to vote for their favorite choice weighing in at 40%.

The first contestant, X2 group, introduced their work called “geometric animals”, which aims to create the world’s most beautiful desktop theme. In the desktop icon design, players boldly abandon the traditional rounded rectangle shape, to be replaced by an angular hexagon, while colors are also adapted, high saturation of oranges and reds are used in different icons. “The colors and borders give a strong sense of visual impact.” explain one of the team members.

The second contestant, “Hemon Design” said they want to climb the “Mount Everest of creation”. They used images of Mount Everest in the background of their desktop, with a simple and clean look said to avoid tiredness even after prolonged usage. Their “double lock screen” innovation attracted the attention of the judge He Gang, who asked: “Won’t the touch function lead to the screen being unlocked involuntarily?” to which the team members explained : “you need to double tap the screen in exactly the same spot, which is highly unlikely to happen unintentionally”.

The third group was «Luofan Design ». Their entry dubbed “New Era” revolves around three key concepts: Nature, Technology and Color. The main screen page‘s design composed of gradient antlers was particularly praised by the judges. The program producer Xu Xiaoyuan said he hoped to have the opportunity to invite creators to collaborate on their programs.

Judges scoring each team’s submission

The fourth group introduced their theme based on the concepts of ice and fire, with a beautiful iceberg reflection and a volcano’s unique visualisation earning them enthusiastic applause. The fifth group presented their “Ruffian Rabbit Ⅱ”, a unique magic effect of the icon and the main screen design which appealed to the younger audience. The last submission came from the 6.62 team who showcased their “Picasso toy”. They explained the origin of the team name, “6.62 is the first 3 digits of the Planck constant, which defines infinite non-circulating decimal symbol, representing our endless innovation in design”. Their design based on an original abstract painting by Picasso produced an entire page of rich colors and smooth lines which earned them a lot of praise from the judges.

The candidates listen to the judges

The second half of the contest focused on the applications developed by the six teams. The first introduced their campus app committed to solving the challenges of research activities, education resources and other issues, by creating a “virtual university tour – meet the future alumni”. Another team’s image processing software, Tipix, has already accumulated more than 3.4 million users who want to participate in art education, ranging from art tools to painting technique. It also addresses the problem of aesthetic education in poor areas. The « Heart » team presented their eponymous app which focuses on college students mental health problems, considering the lack of psychological counseling available to them. Since time and distance issues are significant, psychological counseling thanks to this app can provide a good support platform, and while it is limited to college and university students at the moment, the creators hope to expand it to a larger audience in the near future.

The last three applications are games: Pharos‘s “Tour side story” is a role-playing class casual game; Guofeng Memory is a puzzle game, and “Evlover” is a game which explores the use of AI technology to help players pass levels.

The candidates showcase their work

The finale of the Memoball was especially praised for its 2-player mode, the idea is that phones generally tend to alienate each person by capturing their attention, so playing with another person on a single screen would break the awkward « smartphone » silence at parties… The two creators explained how they came up with the idea of the game, as well as the creative concept, and demonstrated two people in game-playing action which won them laughter and praise from the audience, many of who finally downloaded the game themselves.

After the voting and judges scoring, Hemon Design won the award for best theme, and LuoFan Design, and the Nanjing Suzhou Division team were runners-up. MemoBall won the best application award while Pharos took home the Best Creative Award.

Awards handed to the winners