Woodhaven is a neighborhood with a rich history in the New York City borough of Queens. In 2008 the Woodhaven Cultural and Historical Society created a community wiki but within a year it fell into disuse. Due to recently increased interest in local history, including a library-driven "memory project" and a middle school history club, the organization was eager to make the wiki more accessible to the community. My project consisted of reorganizing the wiki with linking and tagging, publishing guidelines for editing and submitting articles, and using those guidelines to create new example articles. The recent uptick in interest demands an accessible tool where community members can share acquired knowledge of the area’s history and culture. Knowledge of local history enriches the experiences of both communities and individuals alike. This project will help facilitate increased community awareness and sharing of local history by providing an easy to use platform.

What do you want to accomplish today? This week? This month? We all have goals, but finding the best method or technique to achieve those goals can be a challenge. Our world is littered with conflicting information about self-improvement; sifting through it is time-consuming and confusing. We want to help people achieve their goals. That is why we built an application to crowd-source this process for our users. Adapt is a social platform for individuals looking to share and test ideas for self-improvement. Once a user has tested a hypothesis, they can report back to the community and share their findings. This data will then be aggregated and analyzed to help users find the most effective and efficient means of increasing performance and accomplishing personal goals.

Attracting Millennial Shoppers Abhaya Pothina(MSIM), Pavani Piduru (MSIM), Resha Manjrekar (MSIM) The millennial generation is the biggest in US History with a major economic impact. Our study marks the first new phase of millennial research at Costco that would impact shopping for millions of millennials. As the Baby Boomer population which is Costco’s largest customer base today declines, its major customer base will gradually shift to the Millennials. In order for Costco to maintain its status as the second largest retailer in the United States, it is integral for Costco to attract young shoppers. Our project is aimed towards conducting field research to study millennial perception, their retail behaviors, lifestyle and needs to understand how Costco can enhance value proposition for millennials. The secondary focus of our research is to determine shopping variations between US-born and foreign-born millennials. Our Capstone project provides Costco with viable recommendations and best practices that align with Costco’s culture and business goals.

There is well documented anecdotal evidence that people often experience difficulties establishing and maintaining new friendships in an unfamiliar place. In Seattle, the colloquial term for this phenomena is “The Seattle Freeze.” The Stranger, a popular internet magazine and blog describes The Seattle Freeze as a “belief that it is difficult to make new friends in Seattle” and describes Seattleites to be “standoffish, cold, distant, and not trusting.” Do Something! is a mobile application for Android Phones that seeks to thaw the Freeze. Do Something! is a mobile application for the Android platform that provides an activity planning service that facilitates real-world interactions through user defined activities and events. People use a map interface with contextual icons to quickly find and participate in activities they are interested in. Do Something! reduces the social overhead in finding new friends and makes it easier for friends to quickly organize activities.

Parents and caregivers are their child’s first and best teachers. The first 2,000 days of a child’s life (birth to the time a child enters Kindergarten) are critical for cognitive, social and emotional development. Therefore, early learning plays an important role in preparing a child to be successful in school. Early literacy is a component of early learning that encompasses the skills needed for children to communicate and understand language before they can read and write. There are five fun and simple practices that can be incorporated into daily routines beginning at birth to raise successful learners: talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing. This project focuses on educating the community about these five practices, specifically through the use of a short video series that can be linked and distributed through many channels. Community education will provide people with the knowledge to help make a positive impact on young learners.

Photography is a skill that is improved by proper feedback and practice. Most online communities, like Instagram and Flickr, focus more on showcasing photography and not on giving critical feedback to help photographers improve. ISOPRO strives to help the users improve their photography skills by learning through tips and the community's feedback. Through the point system in the commenting section, it will create an incentive for users to give critical feedback. The more points a user has, the higher their reputation will be in the community. When a user is in a rush, they can easily upload their photo and receive generic tips to help them on the spot. Lastly, our drawing tool points out problem areas in a photograph, so the photographer can easily understand what's wrong. We created ISOPRO to help our users share, learn and connect with photographers everywhere.

With the onset of near-instant communication via mobile devices, many platforms have been developed to enhance our collaborative abilities. People are able to collaborate with their schoolwork with Google Docs, but there are currently very few platforms that tackle creative collaboration. Loop Space is a mobile application designed for casual musicians to collaborate on a global scale. There is a messaging system that allows users to find local musicians to encourage real-time collaboration as well in order to expand beyond the constraints of our app. Our app is a musical sketchpad for multiple users to be able to collaborate effectively and spontaneously.

For every book it’s reader, for every online dater their perfect match? More and more people are turning to dating sites and apps to find true love, but finding that match can be incredibly difficult. In 1931, Ranganathan, devised the Five Laws of Library Science, which connect books and readers. Using Ranganathan’s Laws as the theoretical framework, the team tackled these questions: How do people use online dating profiles? What attracts people to certain profiles? How can Ranganathan’s Laws of Library Science be adapted to online dating profiles to help users find each other? By conducting a literature review and interviews, the team delivers the “Five Laws of Online Dating Profiles” and recommendations on getting a profile noticed. This information can help researchers who are interested in studying online dating, developers of online dating apps and websites, and online daters looking to improve their profiles.

The popularity of internet-based social networking services such as Facebook has surged over the previous decade, with more people than ever using these tools to connect with their friends and family. These services are lacking, however, when it comes to helping users engage with others based on mutual interests for daily, location-based activities such as going to the gym, sharing a meal, or studying for an exam. OnTheFly is a multi-platform mobile application which leverages the user's existing Facebook connections to help facilitate this process, providing users with an easy, intuitive method for creating short-term events they want to share with others. OnTheFly is designed to both support existing friendships as well as encourage new ones; users can invite their existing Facebook friends to events, and privacy settings allow users to choose whether they share their event with existing friends only, or open it up to the entire OnTheFly community.