Stonewall Forever
Explore Stonewall Monument’s history through an immersive experience.
The Stonewall National Monument is a cornerstone of the gay rights movement in the United States. 2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the legendary riots of 1969 that helped kick off the transformational LGBTQ rights movement. To mark the occasion, The Center, with support from Google, set out to curate and develop a digital monument for visitors near and far to explore. The Stonewall Forever campaign included a documentary short film, an engaging website, and an immersive AR app. Together, these elements helped tell the history of the Stonewall Inn, and the battles that are still being fought today for LGBTQ rights.
I was contacted by Stink Studios to help with the AR application. Our application is a Unity build that is targeted for iOS and Android phones and tablets. My focus was on developing a fluid UI across all devices, as well as the core application architecture. I also developed the flow to allow users to upload and share their own stories to the Stonewall Forever digital monument.
The app’s primary function is to showcase curated stories, as well as stories from the community, in a visually immersive virtual monument. The app was built to display both photos and video content, from the archival collection along with user-submitted stories.
Signage was placed in the mark to let users know about the app, and serve as a physical marker for the AR tracking. Users could scan the markers at any of the 3 different entry points to the park, and the monument would be physically anchored to the center of the park for them to view and interact with in physical and virtual space.
