Capstone Projects | Information School | University of Washington

Bibliographic Records Revision at CSN Libraries

In 2017, the College of Southern Nevada library moved from the platform Millennium to ALMA. In the past, CSN Libraries allowed for the creation of brief records by circulation staff for reserve items that did not have enough information to provide discovery of these materials in the new discovery platform PRIMO. The solution was to create a bibliographic record procedure that allowed library staff to complete accurate information for these materials. As a result, staff members can revise and correct complete information in these materials successfully. Students, faculty, and staff can identify and view complete bibliographic records through the platform PRIMO.

Gates Foundation: Grand Challenges Data Warehouse

The Grand Challenges Program is a global initiative to solve health and development problems for those most in need. It has been responsible for over 2800 grants in over 100 countries. One of the program’s largest funders, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has been dispersing grants and collecting data throughout the years, but this data currently exists across many disparate sources, in various formats residing on different platforms. This data warehouse was created to synthesize all the data into a single stream that can be easily queried and analyzed to identify true success metrics.

IAC Homelessness Data Model

The City of Seattle Human Services Department (HSD) contracts with community organizations to provide housing & health services to people experiencing homelessness. Previously, HSD staff pieced together program & contract data from many sources. This is a time-consuming and frustrating process, but this information is critical for informing policy and highly visible through media outreach. To meet their needs, we produced a data warehouse and reporting system that captures institutional knowledge, automates data ingest, and makes data analysis more streamlined and trustworthy. We hope to help HSD tell a more complete story about Seattle’s service to its most vulnerable populations.

Movher

Moving is a painful and time-consuming process for companies and customers alike. Movher is a female owned moving and packaging firm based in Spokane. They have a track record of customer satisfaction; however, their own employees find it difficult to plan and organize moves. Currently, they are using several inflexible data management tools to estimate, dispatch, and move. Out solution unifies this process by implementing tiered authentication, integrated payment processing, automated estimation and singular calendar. All the necessary information is kept consistent and each employee has access to their data when and where they need it.

Safistation™ Chlorine Generator Dashboard

PATH, a global health non-profit organization, has created the SafiStation, a chlorine generator to be used in low-resource health centers as a means of creating life-saving disinfectant. Our capstone team used data from the station to improve the current data dashboard that PATH is using to monitor their dashboards by developing specific user interfaces and visualizations that are individualized for each customer segment. Using the improved dashboard, PATH and their future customers can visualize how their machines are operating as well as the returns on their investments.

The Thomas Handforth Digitization Project

Thomas Handforth was an artist, author, and winner of the 1939 Caldecott Medal. After his death, the Tacoma Public Library agreed to archive over 900 pieces of his artwork. The main objective of this capstone was to organize, digitize, and catalog the most fragile and friable pieces in the collection for online accessibility to the public. I scanned and photographed, created metadata, and integrated the digital files of his art into the library’s online catalog. For too long Thomas Handforth has been unknown. By creating this catalog, users will be able to learn more about this incredible artist.

TidySpace

In small, mid-sized clinics, inventory management is a chore that takes valuable resources away from more important tasks. Our project aims to streamline this task in the healthcare space by making it more accessible and updatable. By creating a reactive web app, we intend to make item logging and status almost instantly accessible through each users personal device. This makes it easy for the entire medical staff to locate, refill, and reorder essential medical supplies. By diversifying the accessibility to item inventory and locations, we hope to improve the flow of daily operations within the medical space.

Tracking Global Corneal Transplant Performance

SightLife’s mission is to end corneal blindness by 2040. Millions of people around the world currently struggle to live with corneal blindness. It's a treatable condition with a clear solution: a corneal transplant. Our project is to design a system to simplify data entry and analysis for SightLife and their 32 partners so SightLife can better assist the partners in making decisions regarding cornea donations and cornea transplants. We are harnessing the power of a cloud based solution, using Azure to host our database, and PowerBI to ultimately improve data entry efficiency and allowing users to have flexible data analytics.

UWPData

16 crimes per day occur in Seattle. This is 115% higher than the national average. Working directly with The University of Washington’s Police Department, our mission is to increase the sense of safety on campus by keeping University Residents informed of nearby crimes in real-time. The core of our project is to amplify the accessibility of UWPD’s crime data for technical users through a public API, and for non-technical users through a public visualization dashboard. Through these tools, residents will be empowered to make better decisions surround their safety.

DataBot

Do you love your work, but have this roadblock called “SQL” you don’t have the time to learn? Our product, DataBot, seamlessly bridges the gap between business and technology, so that you can focus on scaling new heights. DataBot leverages Machine Learning to transform natural language into SQL and presents actionable information. This empowers consultants to retrieve data on the fly, and eliminates ad hoc requests to analysts. DataBot harnesses the power of the cloud to ensure zero downtime. Slack integration ensures it can be easily deployed in an office environment. Embrace yourselves for the next disruptive technology revolution!

iSchool Capstone

2019