Youth Led Libraries began as a partnership with Kitsap Regional Library to strengthen communication between the Kingston location and area youth. In collaboration with branch manager Leigh Ann Winterowd, we built relationships with teens and community partners, conducted micro community listening sessions, and engaged in participatory design work with students from the North Kitsap Boys & Girls Club and Kingston High School. To support the continuing dialogue between Kingston youth, the library, and community partners, we developed an online toolkit which can be accessed at youthledlibraries.org.

This project came out of a desire for a more cohesive service model to be provided for patrons on the first floor of the Minneapolis Central Library, part of the Hennepin County Library system. This is the main entry point for patrons into the library as well as a triage point for most questions. Patrons can be bounced between a Welcome desk, the Service desk, the Information desk on the this floor alone. HCL has recently adopted the “patron commitments” and the analysis of the data collected during this project has been through the lens of fulfilling these patron commitments.

We designed #EscapeStone: a series of interactive puzzles that enabled a team of managers at Starbucks Corporate Headquarters to break down information silos that frequently manifest in professional work teams. The team collaboratively solved problems in the context of an Escape Room - a time sensitive, immersive puzzle game that necessitates teamwork and information sharing. The uniquely structured environment ensured that they worked together to solve the challenges; as a result, team members reflected upon each other's problem solving strengths and communication styles. Through a designed experience, team members collaborated to “escape,” then evaluated their process in order to improve information sharing.

Miscommunication in healthcare teams has been identified by researchers as a serious impediment to patient safety. To address this issue, The University of Washington Medical Center’s WWAMI Institute of Simulation in Healthcare created a program called TeamSTEPPS. Since its inception, the program has done amazing work in improving healthcare communication. Unfortunately, TeamSTEPPS currently has no evaluation tool to quantitatively evaluate healthcare teamwork and communication, which makes ascertaining TeamSTEPPS training effectiveness difficult. For my Capstone, I decided to fill this gap and worked with the TeamSTEPPS clinical director to develop, test and refine a new Teamwork Observation Tool. Through the employment of this tool, TeamSTEPPS will enhance their curriculum, which will lead to better healthcare collaboration and improved patient outcomes throughout the United States.

Ava is a chatbot designed to facilitate and continually improve Avanade’s online customer service. Avanade has partnered with the iSchool to develop a solution that will align with their new marketing platform. Avanade‘s vision of the future revolves around artificial intelligence, and Ava is a step in that direction. With the dawn of AI on the horizon, integrating new ways for humans to interact, experience, and use technology are becoming the norm. Artificial intelligence is real, it’s driving business results, and will be a first-class citizen in the enterprise by 2020.

In September 2016 the Wasilla Public Library moved into a new building with dedicated space for graphic novels, comics, and manga. However, the library had no clear goals for how they would develop the collection. This project was designed to create those goals by surveying library users, reviewing current literature on the medium, and developing policies and practices to suit the library's needs. In addition, over 200 titles were suggested for purchase to help build the library's collection.

The Freeport Community Library has over 8,000 children’s books and finding age appropriate books at the correct reading level is hard for children and their caregivers. To solve this problem, a new shelving location was created for early chapter books. Early chapter books were moved to a new shelving location, provided new call numbers and spine labels, leveled using Fountas & Pinnell, and marked with identifying stickers to signify them early chapter books. By creating a separate section for early chapter books, children and caregivers are now able to find early chapter books at the right reading level.

Webrecorder is a free, open-access web archiving software that excels at capturing dynamic, born-digital content. Its technology is powerful, but its user base is largely unknown to its creators at the NYC digital arts non-profit Rhizome. For my project, I collected data through a structured survey and a structured email interview as well as semi-structured, in-depth interviews with select volunteers. I coded these data to prepare them for qualitative analysis, which I will do after graduation. From this analysis, I will create a roadmap of recommendations for the Webrecorder team and points to touch on when writing their user documentation.

CoSphaera is an online language community that connects college language professors nationally in an effort to break down the anxieties associated with learning a new language. Learning a second language is as important now as ever; however, in today’s universities students struggle to practice their conversational skills due to the anxiety of this social interaction and fear of making mistakes in front of their peers. CoSphaera will allow language professors to connect with compatible classrooms in the US, in an effort to provide students with a “revolving-door” experience to conversational language practice, thereby connecting classrooms and breaking down these social anxieties. Nerds R Us | Halle Friedland, Chris Leatham, Adam Sebetich, & Heng Yon | INFO

The Seattle Public Library has developed outreach programming for adult learners that is flexible, dynamic, and heavily utilized--program strengths that also make assessment difficult. In order to capture richer qualitative data associated with the individual impacts and outcomes, our team created and piloted two survey-based assessment tools. These sustainable tools will augment current program practices and support its evolution in alignment with the needs, interests, and continued growth of both learner and tutor participants. Their implementation presents our sponsoring organization with the opportunity to gain greater, measurable insight into how the programming is benefiting the community it serves.