TuneBI: Mobile Marketing Visualization Fei Guo, Yanling Hu, Xiaojuan Wu, Jun Fan (Full-Time MSIM) Sophisticated marketers use TUNE BI (Business Intelligence) to extend their analytics capabilities without the traditional time, expenses, and risk of developing their own business intelligence platform. We worked with TUNE, one of the best mobile applications tracking company in the world, to develop and enhance the visualization experiences of the new TUNE BI services. The new TUNE BI dashboards consist of many Key Performance Indicators such as Return on Investment per Ad campaign and publisher, Average Revenue Per User and Cost of New User Acquisition, and many more. TUNE BI dashboards take out the hassle of understanding analytics, and help marketers and executives to focus on making quick and effective decisions.

The University of Washington Press is a scholarly publishing house which prints approximately 50 new titles each year in a range of academic fields. About 1,400 of these titles are currently available in physical and e-book formats, but more than 3,000 titles of the backlist are yet to be digitized. The purpose of the Physical Archives project is to help make these print books available to individual readers and library collections through digitization. Using the Press’s physical space and database, I was able to gather, organize and document the books of the archives. I reviewed and organized the collection, recorded the bibliographic data in the database, and prepared physical books for scanning. As more readers move to electronic formats and devices, this project will allow these books to reach a larger audience than they might as purely print editions.

The Road Map Project is a collective-impact initiative whose mission is to double the rates of post-secondary degree attainment by 2020 and to close the achievement gaps present in South King County by aligning the efforts of government and communities, of which data plays a critical role. In 2013 the RMP sought to improve its existing folder-based data management by building an analytical data system. The work consists of three phases: building an operational data store, building the data warehouse, and developing applications for reporting and exploration. Organizationally, the system will allow for more automated reporting and data management, freeing up time to engage with stakeholders and develop exploratory analyses and predictive models of student success. More broadly, the impact of this work will empower parents, communities and districts to better explore and measure educational outcomes thereby building account ability and more rapidly aligning efforts at achieving results.

Our work is part of the Game Metadata Research (GAMER) Group’s project: Constructing a Metadata Schema for Video Games and Interactive Media, which aims to capture the essential information about these materials in a standardized, user-centered way. The deliverables of our project include: (1) an XML schema representation of their metadata scheme; (2) a repository of XML instances containing cataloging records of sample video games; (3) a user-friendly data input form for game catalogers; (4) interfaces enabling users to search and browse game records within the database; (5) documentation for users and future maintenance. This project consolidates and enhances GAMER’s previously disparate and incomplete game data into a single, easily extensible format, and delivers a concrete product to help GAMER evaluate their developing metadata scheme. It provides a basis for advancing the GAMER research, contributing to the goal of improving video game organization and access for gamers, catalogers, and researchers.

There are currently few ways for students to explicitly showcase the skills they learn outside of school to advance them in their career and education. At the Pacific Science Center, youth in the Discovery Corps program become leaders in science and presentation, developing crucial personal and professional skills that that they would not have otherwise developed in school. Our solution to giving the students the recognition they deserve is to design a digital badge system for the Discovery Corps Program. Digital badges provide the youth with a way to present these skills in an online platform that they can share with potential employers and educators. This creates a precedent for which skills learned outside of school can be quantified in an applicable manner. Students can gain recognition for skills that previously were unacknowledged, giving them an advantage in reaching future goals.

In order to generate more information from historical weather and environmental records, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) created the Arctic Rediscovery Project. One initiative of the Arctic Rediscovery Project is the crowdsourcing transcribing website, Old Weather. Old Weather facilitates the digitization and transcription of historical images, logbooks, and documents by dedicated volunteers and students. As a part of their collection, NOAA has thousands of images featuring personnel from the Geodetic Survey, academic institutions, and crew from old research vessels. These images were digitized, but until now the public had no access to the collection. By constructing a searchable and browse-able database and designing a functioning website to display these images, our capstone project creates an access point for NOAA researchers, historians, relatives, and Old Weather volunteers.

Communications, including the sharing of and access to information, is crucial to any organization, especially non-profits that rely on a rotating mix of volunteers, have building space in multiple locations, and the inevitable shortage of paid staff. The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, a member and donor-centric organization that fundraises and advocates for the library, have struggled greatly with these restraints. A plan to strengthen internal communications by creating digital platforms to access and share information was created. Virtual spaces were designed for all parties involved, enabling staff, volunteers and board members to become proactive and more self-sufficient. Two databases were built: one that eliminated a tedious daily data entry task, and another 26 that keeps track of all of the categories and subjects of donated books, which has tightened the organization’s successful book operations department.

The IAL Database is a storage and retrieval system for identifying the leadership (head coaches, university presidents, etc.) and institutional movement patterns of Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) programs. Using this application, IAL researchers will be able to evaluate the average term and turnover of the leadership of FBS programs, providing UW and other institutions the opportunity to make informed decisions on future contracts. This system provides a lens for institutions, as well as the public, to begin to understand what has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. Our team took the previously disjointed processes that included paper based records and spreadsheets, and centralized everything into one database with an intuitive web-interface. This web-application now allows the IAL staff to easily manipulate data and generate custom visualizations and reports to further their understanding of the phenomena known as the coaching carousel. 

Any major business shift, be it an acquisition, a new technology or strategy, require an organizational response.This necessitates the need for an organization transformation effort, in which the group, at any specific point of time, should have instant access to information they require relating to projects, tools, internal documents and reports. One of Intel’s leading design groups has undergone a major organization transformation effort. In order to consolidate multiple sites and provide information to the entire organization, the project’s main goal is to have an information rich integrated SharePoint site integrating operations, strategies and processes across multiple groups. This includes an external customer facing site and an internal site restricted to resources within the group. This site helps in effectively aligning to continually evolving changes in the group and increases the presence of this group in the organization roadmap.

Most people have extra items, such as textbooks and video games, sitting on their shelves. They may only use them occasionally, but their friends and family could benefit from them. Collaborative consumption - sharing items among groups instead of buying them individually - empowers people to save money and reduce their ecological footprint. While several solutions exist for collaborative consumption, none combine an intuitive interface with a network of trusted friends and family. We are introducing Shelf, a Web application that facilitates the borrowing and lending of physical items amongst peers. Shelf integrates with social circles to leverage existing trust relationships while encouraging viral spread. We have also made security and accountability a primary concern, rewarding users who safely return items and penalizing those who do not. Our user-oriented approach incorporates extensive research and thorough planning to create a useful and relevant solution. Check us out at dontbeshelfish.com.