What I've Been Building

Projects

A mix of personal experiments, consulting work, and passion projects. I believe in learning by doing—each project here taught me something valuable about product development, user behavior, or technology.

What Mile?

What Mile?

Live

A map-based guessing game for the Appalachian Trail. Players identify locations along the trail with scoring based on how close they get. Built after completing my own thru-hike in 2023.

React Leaflet Claude Code

Key learning: Making a map game feel intuitive on mobile required rethinking every interaction from scratch.

Tiny Doodle

Tiny Doodle

Live

A simple drawing app designed for children. Minimal interface, maximum creativity. Built with React and designed with COPPA compliance in mind.

React Canvas API PWA

Key learning: Designing for children requires ruthless simplicity. Every feature must pass the “can a 5-year-old figure this out?” test.

Tummy Track

Tummy Track

Live

A simple food and symptom journal for people trying to identify dietary triggers. Voice-to-text entry, automatic date/time/meal detection, allergy tags, and a flare-up timeline. Everything on the market was either too complex or required a subscription.

PWA Voice Input Mobile-first

Key learning: The best features are the ones that get out of the way — auto-detecting meal time from the clock meant one less thing users had to think about.

Carbon Tracker

Carbon Tracker

In Beta

A browser widget that helps users understand the carbon footprint of their web browsing through data visualization and behavioral nudges.

React TypeScript Webpack

Key learning: Carbon data is messy and inconsistent. Building trust in the numbers is as important as the numbers themselves.

🌱

jamesburney.com

Live

This site was built with sustainability as a core design constraint, not an afterthought. System fonts only, no frameworks, dark mode default, service worker for offline caching, and lazy-loaded images throughout. Every decision was made with page weight and energy consumption in mind.

HTML/CSS/JS Service Worker Sustainable Design

Key learning: Constraints breed creativity. No frameworks forces a deeper understanding of web fundamentals — and a much lighter page.

🔍 🚧

SEO Insight Engine

In Development

Small service businesses don’t need more analytics — they need to be told what to do. This tool connects to Google Search Console and Analytics, runs data analysis, and delivers a weekly email of prioritized actions. No dashboards to interpret, no expertise required.

Python Pandas Claude API GSC/GA

Key learning: The hard problem isn’t the data pipeline — it’s knowing which insights are actually worth acting on.

What's Next

I'm always building something new. Have a project idea or looking for a PM who ships? Let's talk.

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