Apple App Development — Track A: App Design & Prototyping

26 hours

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Audiences:
Students Teachers
Duration:
26 hours
Type:
Design, Prototyping, and UI/UX
Published:
Updated:

Should our school choose Track A or Track B?

Choose Track A if your students are new to apps and you'd like them to build design confidence before coding. Over 26 hours they plan screens, test user flows, and present a clickable prototype made in Keynote on iPad, with an introduction to Swift concepts. Secondary and JC students go further into accessibility and high-fidelity prototypes. Choose Track B if you want students writing real Swift code from the start. Neither track needs coding experience, and both run on iPads with iPadOS 17 or later.

Domains
Design, Prototyping, and UI/UX Design Thinking
Platforms
Keynote Swift

Course Overview

A friendly, structured introduction to app design for primary, secondary, and junior college students. Track A is ideal for schools that want students to build app-design confidence before deeper coding begins: students learn to identify user needs, plan screens, test flows, and present a clickable prototype.

Students explore design thinking, user journeys, visual storytelling, accessibility, and interactive prototyping using Keynote on iPad. They learn to break down app ideas into screens, actions, and user flows, while building confidence in computational thinking.

By the end of the course, each student or team will have created an interactive app prototype that communicates a clear purpose, intended user, and user experience, and presented it to the class. No prior coding experience is needed.

The course is offered at two levels, listed separately on the IMDA LEARN Roadmaps application. The format stays the same while the depth of design, accessibility, and Swift content scales with the students:

  • Primary 4–6: identify user needs, plan screens and user flows, then build and present a clickable app prototype in Keynote on iPad.

  • Secondary 1–5, JC 1–2: frame problems, design user flows with accessibility in mind, build a high-fidelity prototype, and connect it to Swift programming concepts.

Lesson Outcomes

  • Apply design thinking to identify user needs and app opportunities.

  • Create user flows, wireframes, and screen layouts for an app idea.

  • Apply accessibility and inclusive-design principles to layout, colour, text size, and touch targets.

  • Build and test an interactive prototype using Keynote.

  • Connect app design decisions to introductory Swift coding concepts — sequence, events, variables, and logic — in Swift Playgrounds.

  • Present a prototype and explain the design rationale to an audience.

Details

Project

Each student or team creates and presents an interactive app prototype — a portfolio piece for school showcases and competitions.

Requirements

  • Computer: An iPad running iPadOS 17 or later — iPad (6th gen or newer), iPad mini (5th gen or newer), iPad Air (3rd gen or newer), iPad Pro 10.5-inch or 11-inch, or iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd gen or newer).

  • Software: Keynote, Swift Playgrounds, and Freeform, all free from the App Store. Please install and update them before the first lesson. No AI tools are used.

  • Hardware: None required.

What people say about our courses

The programme taught me that anything is possible. To be able to learn, from scratch, how to code an entire app and publish it on the App Store ― it's an experience that I'd recommend to anyone who's interested in coding! The community also kept me coming back long after I graduated. Truly a great programme.

Tinkercademy is a flexible, responsive and innovative partner, ready to always collaborate to develop cutting-edge coding programmes together with the school. They have depth of expertise, in both technology skills and pedagogy, to understand the needs of our students and engage them holistically.

My past year with the programme has been an incredible journey that I will cherish forever. I've always dreamt of sharing my work with the world, and thanks to the programme's supportive mentors, I turned that dream into reality by publishing my app on the App Store for everyone to use. Along the way, I made unforgettable memories and gained hands-on experience in app development.

Very useful workshop. Guidance and examples were very beginner friendly and easy for participants to follow and try during the workshop. Good to build confidence especially for absolute beginners.

Having the experience as ex-school teachers, Tinkercademy is able to utilise sound educational pedagogy… We continually receive good feedback from students… An Arduino teachers' workshop with Tinkercademy even inspired a couple of our Science teachers to design a term-long performance task.

Most of the time i didn't feel lost, it was thoroughly well explained. I also like the Kahoot quizzes at the end of each session.

Join us for the best coding and digital making experiences for students, teachers, and professionals in Singapore and beyond.

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