Close was a tool I built with Sam Gorman and Kanyes Thaker in early March, when Covid-19 first hit the United States in full force. We had been working on Iris together, but as every college slowly shut down, the media was erupting with stories and life at large was more or less coming to a halt, so we decided to spend a few weeks building a tool that let people find local stories amongst the avalanche of information.
Close allowed people to find Covid stats and media updates just for their local area. It aided local residents in finding out about how the virus was affecting their community and schools without having to sift through thousands of headlines. It was shipped well before Google and larger players had released more widespread Covid trackers.