TRACE — Turning real places into living stories.

The Idea Behind TRACE

TRACE was inspired by the idea that cities hold invisible stories waiting to be discovered. I wanted to create a platform where movement through real places could unlock narratives, memories, audio, and clues, turning the city itself into an interactive experience.

What I Learned While Building It

While building the project, I learned that technology becomes more powerful when it helps people connect with culture, place, and emotion. I also learned the importance of balancing immersion with simplicity, so the experience feels both intuitive and meaningful.

How TRACE Was Developed

I developed TRACE by defining a clear concept, shaping its identity, and focusing on a simple MVP: a pilot experience with geolocated points, narrative content, audio, and a clear user journey. This helped transform the idea into something practical and testable.

Challenges and Positioning

One of the main challenges was creating a project flexible enough for culture, education, tourism, and entertainment without losing its core identity. Another was positioning it as more than a tourism app — as a cultural storytelling platform that reveals the hidden layers of the city.

Business Model

TRACE operates as a creator and producer of geolocated narrative experiences. Rather than depending on third-party content or an open platform model, its value lies in conceiving, writing, designing, producing, and operating original experiences.

Its business model is centered on three main revenue streams: partner productions, original IP, and special activations. TRACE develops custom experiences for museums, municipalities, festivals, archives, theaters, educational initiatives, cultural tourism operators, and brands seeking cultural or place-based activations.

Alongside commissioned work, TRACE can also launch proprietary experiences under its own brand, building an original catalog, testing new formats, and strengthening its cultural positioning.

Revenue can come through creation and production fees, technical implementation, paid seasonal routes, temporary activations, and sponsored cultural experiences. Additional services such as narrative curation, creative direction, route design, and editorial or sound production further expand the model.

The strength of TRACE is not only in the technology itself, but in its ability to turn places into meaningful narrative experiences. Technology is the infrastructure, but the core value lies in storytelling, curation, and creative production.

Next Steps

The next step for TRACE is to develop and test its first pilot experience in a real urban setting. This includes refining the user journey, producing the first narrative and audio assets, and validating how users interact with geolocated storytelling in practice.

After the pilot, the focus will be on gathering feedback, improving the experience, and strengthening the platform’s core features. Over time, TRACE can expand through new formats, thematic routes, and institutional partnerships while remaining centered on its main purpose: revealing the hidden stories of places through interactive narrative.

Built With

• chatgpt
• elevenlabs
• gemini
• openstreetmap
• wordpress