Our project, Data Forensics, is part of our sponsor’s larger Data Afterlives project. The NSF asks researchers to make federally funded data available. We researched NSF awards to see if we could find data associated with these projects. Our findings demonstrate the challenges in finding data and how the accessibility of data varies depending on the NSF research area. We discuss the steps that we took in the course of our research, as well as why this research matters, particularly to information professionals and how national policy shapes the future of open research. We offer future avenues of research.

This case study focuses on non-standardized addresses in Kenya and their negative impact on delivery infrastructure. Through extensive research and stakeholder engagement workshops, our team developed a digital addressing minimal viable product. We utilized a user-centered design and design thinking approach to product development ensuring desirability, feasibility, and viability. The MVP includes features allowing users to provide delivery instructions for better driver context. This solution enhances customer experience by providing accurate doorstep deliveries, and improved location identification and communication. Once completely implemented, this Bawbab can enable doorstep delivery for 38M Kenyan residents.

In this project, we identified potential digital safety concerns in the metaverse based on current trends in Web 2.0. We first develop three use cases in the healthcare, social, and entertainment sectors with specific scenarios. Then we identified current compensating controls to propose mitigation strategies for each risk in all three scenarios. Lastly, we categorised common risk categories to inform areas of concern and potential impact in the metaverse for general users.

Carina is a two-sided matching platform for those who are in need of homecare and those who provide homecare. To address user concerns about unresponsiveness, our team conducted extensive research and user testing. Findings showed that users faced missed notifications, forgotten replies, and overlooked messages. To increase the number of successful matches, we developed innovative designs relating to an unread message summary and message notification reminders with a focus on user experience.

The guide created for this capstone project aims to educate artists and creatives on the importance of file management while providing a guide for implementation. The survey sent out to artist communities found that artists (1) have a limited understanding of information organization, (2) do not follow an organization system, and (3) feel that information organization is essential. These results inspired the creation of a how-to guide for artists to follow and implement into their creative profession. The guide educates on various information organization topics specific to art and creative use with modeled examples.

Market maps groups companies providing similar services together for industry analysis. Its optimization addresses limitations of manual creation and user customization. Through NLP techniques including keyword extraction and topic modeling, we have achieved improved segmentation, better naming, enhanced brand-image and credibility. The project's results include automation of a cumbersome manual task and faster refresh, resulting in reduced latency and improved customer experience. By enabling customers to find companies in newer segments as a starting point for research, our project makes a significant difference in the lives of investors, entrepreneurs and stakeholders, empowering them with accurate, timely insights for better decision-making.

Trying to find information can be tough, especially when a website has lots of product offerings. Microsoft Learn users are facing difficulty because of the myriad of information, confusing UI, and lack of filter options. We conducted in-depth user research with surveys, interviews, and analysis and rendered 5 evidence-based solutions to improve the search experience on Microsoft Learn. Further, We developed an end-to-end roadmap to implement these recommendations and visualized them with a high-fidelity prototype. We expect these changes to provide improved content quality and relevance along with ease of use, saving significant time for the users.