Academics:   Master of Science in Information Management

Speakeasy is the name of a 17,000-plus term technical glossary used by employees of AT&T Wireless. The glossary is the most often used source throughout the company to look up terms, acronyms, and definitions. The current user search interface consists of a term search and keyword search. The browse interface is composed of a first letter browse and special glossary browse. Special glossaries are logical subsets of the whole collection. An administrator can tag terms for inclusion into one or more special glossaries. One area of improvement in the browse functionality that has been suggested is some type of relationship hierarchy between terms. For example, a user looking up TDMA finds the definition, but isn’t told that this time division multiple access technology is a direct competitor to CDMA, or code division multiple access. Currently, one term might allude to a relationship with another term, but no hyper-linking is provided. Nor is there any rigor in defining the relationship. This puts the burden on the thousands of Speakeasy users to discover and then look up the related words in the search window. Our Capstone project will design an extension to the existing Speakeasy functionality to remedy this problem. Our goal is to develop a tool with the functionality to show the glossary’s hierarchical relationships, synonyms and related terms.

As the title suggests, I intend to design and implement a user interface for the LitLinker project in order to fulfill my Capstone. LitLinker is a system that mines the Medline database for potential causal links between biomedical terms. The development of this system is headed by Dr. Wanda Pratt, and includes a team of students (7) focusing on varied aspects of the system. My focus will be on designing and implementing a web based user interface for querying, packaging, and delivering requested data to the user in a quick, friendly, and efficient manner. The major body of this work will involve process development in a code based environment. It will also involve, to a smaller degree, coordination and development of data design. In completing this project, I will primarily coordinate with three other students in addition to my sponsor, one working in data development and two others working on the front end (style, layout, usability) of the user interface.

The company librarians have historically cataloged physical resources such as books, periodicals and CDs. They also have maintained a website (called the InfoCenter) with a search page for their catalog, information on how to request a reference search, and many links to enterprise services such as databases of specialized engineering journals. The information on the website is not grouped into categories, and the home page contains a list of 50+ links. A recent review of the weblogs shows that user visits to the website are very low, while emails and phone calls to the librarians are the primary means of contact. There is also a separate website for the many discipline groups, and over the past two years it has been collecting links to nearly 500 documents authored within the company. These documents are only loosely grouped into categories, making the search and retrieval of important information difficult.Project Objectives: Create a library portal that allows users to quickly understand the large array of resources available to them, and allows them to conduct much of the research/retrieval themselves, with easy access to librarians for more complex projects; Catalog all internally-created technical reference documents, using the metadata specific to user needs; Create one-click queries to allow staff to quickly find documents by subject or by disciplines, from among a range of guidelines, policies, and more; Minimize maintenance needed, minimize cost and improve performance.

The goals of the Capstone Project are the following: First, identify how forms are used in the court system. Second, find the gaps on how the courts use forms and how they want to use them. Third, identify products or solutions that can that will narrow or close the gap. The measures for success are the following; First, the gathering of information from the AO and individual courts. Though this might seem to be essential to an information audit, many times the federal government is very leery of outside agencies and individuals going through their business processes. I Second, display a chart that shows a delta between how the courts use forms and how they want to use forms. With this chart, I hope to show the gap between the creation, usage, and storage of forms from where the courts are today and where they want to be in the future. Third, produce a report demonstration how applying varius solutions will close the identified gaps. This report will be based on the second metric of success.

Vorsite is an "e-business solution provider" company based in Seattle. Their key services include client web portal development. They have tightly coupled their services to the Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 product. The capstone project is the design and potential delivery of a portal implementation for a given Vorsite client. The portal will be used as a collaborative, online workspace by the client. There might be a few additional deliverables or additional project activity, depending on the target size for the portal.

The goal of this project is to produce powerful customized auto-generate physician activities reports to provide to senior management in support of organizational strategic planning. The project involves creating a central data repository to assemble data from various sources, validating, summarizing data, and developing system interface and reports.

The goal of this project is to produce a redesigned, more robust and useful intranet site for Sogeti PCU. This site will be used by consultants as primary reference for project information, who’s-who in the unit information and other useful information such as how to enter time in Evolve (our timesheet application) and upcoming Unit activities. The project involves a review of the existing intranet as well as re-designing it to fit current user information needs.

The SNAG website will offer graduates of the MSIM program at UW a way to stay networked - maintain the contacts that they have established in the program. The MSIM experience has allowed for a window of enhancement in the professional careers of many of the cohort. Once the classes have been completed, there is a likelihood that the established social bonds will deteriorate. This would be detrimental. To use the skills that we have built in the MSIM program and to keep the social bonds of the cohort available, we propose that the feasibility of SNAG (Staying Networked After Graduation), a website for students to keep in touch, be explored and developed as a capstone project for our MSIM experience.

The SWFPAC (Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific) Indoctrination, Certification, and Training department has an intranet website that is in dire need of attention. The website was started over a year ago but was never finished due the nature of the Navy transferring its personnel every 2 to 3 years leaving the website stale. The scope of the project will include the needs assessment, implementation of the assessment to its fullest possible, and the continual maintenance of the website. The implementation will start in late March. The IT department has authorized administrator access to update the website and has placed me in a special convening of a MS Frontpage class convening in March for this purpose. There will be continual attention given to the website long after the capstone is over as I will become one of the two people at SWFPAC that will be responsible for having a current and efficient website. The strategy will be to get the website updated and running again as soon as feasibly possible and then make continual upgrades to the website as time goes on.

The scope of the National Training Calendar Project is to do the following. Conduct a full requirements and systems analysis design on transforming the National Training Calendar from an excel file to a three-dimensional online tool accessible to all 15 Care call centers showing the following: Training Calendar initiative, length, training requirements, methods, project launch; Transitioning National Training Calendar from Excel file to another tool, web, or currently existing tool/off the shelf tool. (TBD in analysis); Enable National Resource Planning and Learning and Development Delivery teams to view training constraints. For example, trainer constraints, and training room constraints, thus enable teams to better predict when an initiative may not complete on time for launch; Allow National Resource Planning to review a way to interface Training Calendar with TCS (CSR scheduling tool); Gather training completion feedback via T-metrics (Reporting Engine) and update National Training Calendar. Learning and Development, Resource Planning and the PMO office, all strive to meet the same goals. All teams want a better, easier and more comprehensive way to communicate training calendar initiatives and constraints to the 15 Call Center Support Managers and personnel in the field.

This Capstone project focuses on building a virtual tour for the University of Washington. The scope of our effort will include requirements definition, design, and analysis of the proposed implementation. The construction and the populating of the content will occur after the capstone project is completed. For this application/website, there will be a database developed which stores much of the metadata needed by the website. This metadata will have relationships that support the functionality needed by users. Much of the activities during the Capstone class will be focused on developing requirements and coming up with a design for this website. User interviews will be conducted in order to determine requirements. The design with then be reviewed by our sponsor, stakeholders, and users.

The Washington State Department of Information Services is currently in the process of conducting a proof of concept that will integrate the various information systems among state and local justice organizations. The intent is to facilitate information sharing that is quick, complete, and accurate to ensure public safety. Washington State has already done a significant amount of work in this project including several strategic and implementation recommendations from different agencies, as well as preliminary evaluation of Request for Information (RFI) responses. The capstone project will build upon what has already been done and develop a set of evaluation criteria that will be used to validate subsequent proposals and recommendations. The main focus is to develop an instrument to determine if a solution is in line with goals and expectations from business and technology perspectives. The deliverable is a document containing areas of critical success factors and corresponding set evaluation criteria.