This is an iBeacon enabled walking tour app I built to help rebrand and promote one of Boston’s most visited tourist attractions- the Boston Public Garden. Working with city crews I installed and tuned 18 Gimbal Beacons in and around the public garden. The app allows users to find the public garden and then provides a non-linear audio tour highlighting the important features and monuments as they walk around.

    The tour was designed around an illustrated custom map, but thanks to the use of beacons it can be used entirely hands-free.  My goal was for the app to enhance the experience of visiting the park, but not get in the way. During development, I paid careful attention to background behavior to ensure that a user could simply lock their phone, plug in headphones and walk around with the app narrating the important sights as they are encountered.

     This app was built with Objective – C using the Gimbal SDK, MapKit, and CoreLocation. It won best mapping/location-based app in the Appy Awards and received a merit at the New England Hatch Awards

Update: We stopped maintaining this app a year or two ago and it was being managed directly by the Friends of the Public Garden. The app stopped appearing in the app store as of February 2017.