Dating games are interactive electronic games that touch upon complex, real-world issues such as successfully navigating relationships, achieving healthy emotional intimacy, and exploring gender and sexual identities. However, conventional game tagging does not reflect the nuances of the genre or serve player information needs. To address this, we developed a taxonomy that is more inclusive of queer themes and can be adapted for both user-facing and back-end game cataloging purposes. We refined it with feedback from user interviews and industry professionals and applied it to create an online repository of dating games that serves as an information hub for players.

First-grade teachers at Glenridge Elementary School in Kent, Washington, were not given resources or curriculum to teach their social studies units. This led to stressful workloads for teachers and differing instruction for students. We surveyed teachers to determine their current practices and needs and researched the learning standards. We then found engaging, equitable, and standards-based open-access resources to create curriculum units encompassed into learning kits. These kits will help teachers plan their units and provide similar resources and talking points to make instruction equitable for students. Students will also see themselves in their learning.

Our project centered around creation of student training and documenting progress for the Peer Education Program (PEP), a new model of student employment at Odegaard Library based around peer mentorship. Our deliverables included a You Should Know About learning experience for Libraries' staff, training modules for the first PEP cohort, and a Toolkit to act as an introductory resource for those interested in the project. This project helped to promote the PEP initiative, train new student employees, and create a guide for project duplication.

Portable air cleaners can provide additional protection against the spread of COVID-19 in small businesses, but it’s difficult for business owners to determine if an air cleaner will effectively ventilate their space. PACC is a web application based on research from air quality experts at Harvard University and University of Colorado Boulder that helps users find affordable and effective air cleaners. Sponsored by the Washington State Department of Commerce, our application lessens the burden on small businesses by providing a user-friendly website with a simplistic design. Our tool helps businesses operate safely and protects the health of employees and customers.

Epic’s Unreal Engine is complex with a lot of documentation and courses. The content creators face difficulty finding the information they are looking for and thus, require dynamically recommended related documentation/courses based on the Unreal Online Learning (UOL) search. We built a predictive analytics tool to recommend similar documentation and courses based on the UOL journey map of the user, working with terms from the taxonomies and knowledge graph. Our project helps users from different backgrounds to identify documentation easily, enabling equitable access to the tool. It also provides a personalized search experience for the user.

Epic Games maintains documentation and learning courses for Unreal Engine, a 3D creation tool. Many users find it difficult to search and navigate between these materials. We developed a unified data model that identifies overlaps in the metadata and relationship classes between documentation and online courses. This model formed the foundation of a knowledge graph of 2,700 documentation pages and 130 courses built with Neo4j. Analyzing the knowledge graph reveals dynamic connections. As Epic continues to build on our framework, content creators will be able to identify tags and linkages, bringing relevant material together and delivering relevant content to users.

The Worcester Public Library’s intranet, or SHP, is underutilized, outdated, disorganized, and not intuitive for its users. The absence of an effective, centralized communication and knowledge-sharing platform makes it difficult for staff to access the information they need to meaningfully assist and inform the community. We delivered a two-phase consultative report to guide redesigning the SHP, detailing best practices, user research findings, a redesigned intranet concept, and change and organizational management recommendations. Our project uncovered communication deficiencies and provided the WPL with a framework for redesigning and implementing a new intranet. Improved staff communication will facilitate overall community engagement.

This project’s primary aim was to build the electronic infrastructure to catalog what is available in the Lambert House Library so that we can expand services offered to young adults. Over the course of the year, we established a new catalog system, input the collection into the new software, cleared out damaged or out-of-date material, and configured an easy-to-use circulation system. With the completion of this project, patrons of Lambert House can finally locate material and check books out, while staff can assess what books are popular among the collection and where there is room for expansion.

Epic Games provides the Unreal Engine to diverse users who use its functionalities for varied purposes. However, users often struggle to locate documentation most relevant to their needs. A keyword taxonomy would allow Epic’s technical writers to more consistently tag over 3,000 documentation pages, which would in turn improve searchability. By working to develop this taxonomy, we helped Epic to better understand the nuances of their unique knowledge management challenge. Our work yielded a proof of concept as well as recommendations that will help guide the company as they continue to work toward more equitable access to the Unreal Engine.

Voices: Data from an Expansive Christian Community is a structured repository of people, published media, and affiliate organizations that expands beyond the hegemonic voices of white American Evangelicalism and represents a more diverse, ecumenical, and global vision of Christianity. It provides a metadata schema and selection criteria for a curated dataset intended to support further research and analysis. The structure aims to elevate diverse content creators across disciplines who engage in smart and significant conversation about Christianity and its intersections with other faiths, race, social justice, gender, sexuality, and environmentalism.