Emily Was Here
An immersive audio walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, narrated by Emily Warren Roebling, that reveals each chapter as you reach the place where it happened. Relaunched in August 2026 as a white-label experience template: the ChalkNotes concept rebuilt from the ground up as a lightweight, reusable iOS app. Designed, built, and shipped entirely by me using AI-assisted development end to end.
"ChalkNotes proved the concept but carried the weight of a platform: a CMS, accounts, creator tools. Most location-based audio experiences don't need any of that. The question was whether one person, with AI-assisted development, could ship a polished geo-aware audio and AR experience with a real business model in weeks rather than quarters, and end up with something reusable."
Designing the Interface
The design constraint was the same one that shaped MAIA and AETHER: the technology should never ask to be looked at. On a bridge, that means the phone stays in the pocket and the audio does the work, with the map and AR available when you want them rather than demanding attention. Chapters trigger where the events happened, so the story and the place stay locked together. Shipping it solo with an AI-assisted workflow changed how I think about scope. Things that used to be a sprint (the purchase flow, the cross-platform unlock, the App Store assets) became an afternoon, which meant more of the time went to the walk itself: pacing, narration, where to stop. That's the argument this project makes. A designer who can ship the whole thing gets to spend the saved time on design.
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Live on the App Store (v1.0 August 11, v1.1 August 22, 2026) with a full-experience in-app purchase; 5.0 rating at launch.
- 02
Buy once, walk anywhere: a single purchase unlocks the full experience on iPhone and in any web browser, so a visitor can start on the bridge and finish at home.
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Zero data collection. The app works without accounts or tracking, which simplified both the privacy story and the build.
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Turned a single-site experience into a template: the same codebase can be reskinned for another landmark, walk, or venue.