Turning a neighborhood into an immersive history experience

**Mobile Application**

Screen shots from the Chinatown Town mobile application

The California Migration Museum (CMM) was founded in 2021 to build hands-on, immersive content that tells the rich and complex story of how migration has shaped California in profound ways – and how it continues to do so. Migration is California’s story — and CMM explores this complex history of not only welcome but also exclusion, displacement, and resistance, asking challenging questions about who “we” are — and who we want to become.

Migrant Footsteps tours spark thought-provoking conversations that can help change entrenched narratives around contemporary migration issues.

**Cinema Box**

I created this installation in a cafe in the Mission District that shows a video on the Columbian immigrants who came to San Francisco in the late 1950s and started the coffee roasting business that fueled the West Coasts cafe culture.

Project Goals:

**Tapestry**

I created this tapestry hung in a window of Old Shanghai Chinese gift shop in Chinatown. When a user points their camera at this tapestry while using the app, it triggers an augmented reality overlay thats shows what the street looked like in 1890 Chinatown.

Walking Cinema, a production company that created immersive experiences, hired me to work on a mobile application supporting an immersive tour.

The California Migration Museum (CMM) partnered with Walking Cinema to create a “virtual museum” featuring migration stories—an immersive audio-led history tour with supplemental augmented reality and video experiences triggered by location and physical objects.

Process:
I had created a mobile application from a prior project, Before the Bulldozers for the Smithsonian, which was used as a framework for the CMM application. I also made several physical artifacts to create “trigger” objects to launch short video stories or augmented reality experiences.

Team:
The Walking Cinema team comprised a Director responsible for the audio and film production, a producer who recorded and gathered stories, a mobile app developer, voice actors and historians and a junior designer who focused on the augmented graphics production.

I was the lead designer responsible for the application design, visual design, and set design for installations throughout the city.

The CMM team designed their website.

Outcome:
Four mobile apps, three immersive stories and several installations.

Migrant Footsteps is a series of free, immersive audio stories that help you discover how migration has shaped every corner of the Golden State. Walk directly into San Francisco's migration stories, guided by audio, music, and augmented reality. Migration is California's story, and Migrant Footsteps brings this history to life.

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