Thousands of travelers and homeowners use peer-to-peer homestay services like Airbnb every day. However, there is a major problem existing. The home management systems are not efficient, secure, and user-friendly. Most houses manage traveler’s entry-exit through conventional locks. When people book accommodations, they have to go through the hassle of collecting, using, and returning the key. Often, travelers reach the house during odd hours which becomes inconvenient for both parties. Also, traditional lock and key systems can lead to fraud. Our project solves this real-world problem by implementing a secure and user-friendly cloud-based IoT lock and key system.

For organizations and groups, combining social media and dialogue together can be even more of an important tool for communication, promotion, awareness, and action. While opportunities are there for dialogue via social media platforms, it can be hard to implement due to a lack of training or experience in dialogic methods, or a lack of awareness that these dialogic tools are available. This research project investigated the impact of using dialogue facilitation techniques on social media in an effort to have more meaningful dialogue and increased engagement via electronic platforms.

The UW has over 1500 hours of historically important audio in the Milo Ryan Phonoarchive. This collection includes archived CBS radio broadcasts, primarily from the World War 2 era. Currently, it is difficult for scholars to identify materials of interest within this collection. Metadata for this collection including titles, broadcast dates, and program titles were transcribed into a printed book. In this project, the book is being converted to a fully searchable digital finding aid using enhanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques to greatly enhance the original scans.

Public libraries exist to provide equitable access to information, which requires continuously working with communities to understand their needs. My Capstone is part of SPL’s efforts to involve community members in their website redesign process. This project asks, “Who, taking into account language and digital access barriers, does not use spl.org, and why?”. To answer this question I analyzed data from SPL surveys and worked with branch libraries and community centers to design and run qualitative research sessions. My deliverables include data towards my research question and recommendations for conducting future SPL design research projects.

Public funding has always been an important part of the definition of a public library. Public libraries have seen a decline in funding, relying on a mixture of external types of funding to keep services running. With state and local governments facing financial pressures, some public libraries have explored alternative ways to maximize funding, by forming independent library districts. This model gives districts flexibility in increasing property taxes or other taxes at the municipal level – the primary method of collecting funds. This project reviews any previous research or data to determine if this long-held assumption is correct.

StreamSurfer addresses the issue of online legal streams being difficult to find, and users not knowing which sources are legal or illegal. For example, if a user were to search for a movie or TV show on a popular search engine they’d get legal and illegal results as well as non-stream results. StreamSurfer solves this by creating a search engine specifically for online legal streams of movies and TV shows. Users can search for a show or movie, returning back links to online legal streams for that show or movie, as well as information about the movie or TV show.

Mobile technology and digital communication channels are ubiquitous in today’s undergraduate classroom. What impact have they had on the personal relationship between students and their instructors? I conducted a pilot study within the Information School, surveying and interviewing both undergraduates and their instructors. Results indicated that the personal relationship remains authority-based, with both actors striving to maintain the divide, but digital communication opens a new space in which undergraduates and instructors interact, potentially on the professional level. Further study could illuminate this space, guiding higher education toward a better understanding of classroom relationships.

Ensuring the health of shipments is of paramount importance to a Fortune 500 global logistics services company. Project Superbug assists Expeditors in doing exactly that by creating an automated reporting system that provides a data architecture supporting business intelligence and analytics. Precious man-hours are saved through this system, thereby providing analysts with more time to examine shipments. This brings great value to the health care client sector by enabling diagnosis with rapid turnaround times, which in turn creates faster treatment decisions, leading to better patient experience

TellToo focuses on the journey we take as individuals to find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in life. For many of us, technology has changed the way we socialize. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have pushed social interactions to shorter, less personal, and more trivial exchanges. This has left certain core elements of socialization in the dust. Our project focuses on modernizing those elements and building a platform that delivers a more human centric method of sharing and connecting. Our mobile application allows users to tell stories through audio recording and visually navigate chains to naturally related stories.

TellToo focuses on the journey we take as individuals to find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in life. For many of us, technology has changed the way we socialize. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have pushed social interactions to shorter, less personal, and more trivial exchanges. This has left certain core elements of socialization in the dust. Our project focuses on modernizing those elements and building a platform that delivers a more human centric method of sharing and connecting. Our mobile application allows users to tell stories through audio recording and visually navigate chains of naturally related stories.