Our Story

Made at a kitchen table, for families like ours.

Michele Walker with her sons Matt and Luke, and their dog Piggy, at the kitchen table, Thanksgiving 2025 — Thanksgiving 2025, at the same kitchen table where it all began. Matt, Luke, and Piggy all appear in the App Store screenshots.

Hi, I’m Michele Walker, founder of Bee Visual.

These are my sons, Matt and Luke.

Choiceworks began around our kitchen table because I couldn’t find visual supports that worked in the ways children needed in order to feel supported. I started creating my own photos, laminating them myself, backing them with magnets, and putting them on a dry erase board.

More than twenty years later, the little boys who inspired Choiceworks are helping build its future.

Luke is the child’s voice inside Choiceworks, recorded when he was nine years old, and he continues contributing ideas as he begins graduate school in clinical mental health counseling. His childhood needs also inspired the original Cove, a safe place built inside his classroom that now lives inside the app.

Matt is my right hand, and the boy in the app’s pictures. He has tested every Choiceworks release for years, was the driving force behind bringing both Choiceworks and Choiceworks Calendar to Android, and helps guide the day-to-day decisions that shape Bee Visual. Matt could run this company.

Now, I continue to design, build, and ship every version of Choiceworks for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Android.

Michele and Luke at the kitchen table with the original Choiceworks board — Where it began: the kitchen table, 2005.

Milestones

2005–2015

Where it began: the kitchen-table boards, the Blood Draw Learning Kit, the Gold Stevie, Apple’s top one percent, the patent, SXSWedu.

See the early years

2005

The first Choiceworks boards, hand-built on the backs of the boys' Disney books, beside the production system they became.

2006

The production system: the schedule board mid-morning with the timer running, and the feelings board with its companion book.

The Choiceworks schedule board mid-morning: cards placed, three flipped to All Done, the timer running at 2 minutes 5 seconds, dry-erase marker at the ready — The production system, still working: the schedule board mid-morning with the timer running, and the feelings board with its companion book. July 2026.

The Choiceworks feelings board, When I am upset I can get help or take a break, with its companion book open beside it — The production system, still working: the schedule board mid-morning with the timer running, and the feelings board with its companion book. July 2026.

The original Choiceworks waiting board with its companion book, the built-in timer running — The waiting board with its companion book, the built-in timer running.

2011–2012

The Blood Draw Learning Kit, created with Children's Hospital Boston and Carol Gray's Gray Center, set the child up for success: see what is going to happen before it happens, and practice with safe tools before the real day. In the hospital's study, blood-draw success rose from 86 percent to 96 percent, and Autism Spectrum Quarterly put the results on the record. The kit’s guides are free here.

The Blood Draw Learning Kit box, front and back, on slate: clinically shown to reduce anxiety and increase success, developed with Children's Hospital Boston and the Gray Center

2012

The Gold Stevie Award. Smartphone or Tablet App of the Year. Watch her acceptance speech.

Michele Walker holding the Gold Stevie trophy at the Stevie Awards for Women in Business

2013

Apple selects Bee Visual among the top 1 percent of its developers and invites Michele to New York to collaborate. The only other organizations chosen: Smithsonian, Scholastic, and Merriam-Webster.

2013

Parenting magazine names Choiceworks one of its five "Au-Some Apps": Jeana Lee Tahnk, "Au-Some Apps," Parenting School Years, Issue 276, July 2013, p. 93.

The Au-Some Apps page in Parenting magazine featuring Choiceworks

2014

U.S. Patent 8,740,623 is honored by the Boston Patent Law Association as one of the Top 12 patents of the year.

The Invented Here honorees on stage, Michele Walker front row

The Boston Patent Law Association certificate: Invented Here! 2014 proudly recognizes Michele A. Walker for her invention, U.S. Patent 8,740,623, assignee Bee Visual, LLC

2015

SXSWedu, Austin, March 2015. Choiceworks was on the tables at the Inclusive AppRoom, invited by Cristen Carson Reat, co-founder of BridgingApps at Easterseals Greater Houston. In the picture on the right, the blow pop in Matt's mouth and the glasses on Luke are simulation props: they are experiencing disabilities they don't have, in a room Cristen built for exactly that. Matt, fifteen, wrote about that hour, and BridgingApps still hosts his words today.

Matt and Luke at a workshop table at SXSWedu — Left: the Inclusive AppRoom presenters, Betsy Walling Furler and Cristen Carson Reat among them; Michele, far right. Right: Matt and Luke, mid-simulation. Austin, March 2015.

2025

Thirteen years after the first trophy, Michele is honored with the Silver Stevie for Most Resilient Female Leader at the Stevie Awards for Women in Business. The judges wrote that she "scaled through force of will," and that her entry "sets a new standard for integrity in the tech industry."

June 2026

The lesson from Italy. Racing to catch a flight, Luke went ahead to find the gate while Michele searched for food in an airport where she could not read the language. The one thing she recognized instantly was a fast-food logo: known food, a way through. They ate it on the plane. She came home and rebuilt the whole card library: sharper artwork, new languages. Seven of them now: English, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, French, and Portuguese.

The departure board at Rome Fiumicino, June 22, 2026: the only instantly readable things on it are the airline logos — Rome Fiumicino, June 22, 2026, 2:28 in the afternoon. The board she couldn’t read, and the pictures that worked anyway.

Luke walking fast through Fiumicino under the pictogram signs: the pictures pointed the way when the words could not — Rome Fiumicino, June 22, 2026, 2:28 in the afternoon. The board she couldn’t read, and the pictures that worked anyway.

Today

Choiceworks is featured by Apple and named a 2026 Webby Awards Official Honoree for Accessibility and Inclusion.

Today, Choiceworks speaks seven languages and features a new sample board: Alphabreaths, where Dr. Christopher Willard of Harvard Medical School teaches his breathing practices right on the boards, so children can learn mindfulness techniques and include them throughout their day.

The Alphabreaths sample board open in Choiceworks, teaching a breathing practice — The new Alphabreaths sample board.

The board library in Choiceworks on iPad: all the sample boards, including the new Alphabreaths schedule — The new Alphabreaths sample board.

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