At Golder Associates (Golder), Business Information Services (BIS) have a diverse user population of over 9,000 employees and consulting clients located worldwide. BIS provide support in multiple business aspects such as general administration, communication and knowledge management. As a result of the organization’s rapid growth, user experience has become a critical requirement of BIS. In our strategy project, we work with Golder End User Relations Function on mapping methodologies and staffing needs of user experience requirements. We made recommendations on how the areas of user analytics, system usability, and information accessibility can be improved within BIS. Our strategy document informs Golder with up-to-date methodologies through example processes developed on real scenarios. With our strategy document, Golder will be able to build a professional user experience function that effectively connects people and technology.

Among the many online services that provide communication channels for groups, there is a lack of singular services that provide users a way to easily interact with each group in one place. In order to communicate with their respective groups, 25 out of 27 people we surveyed online use four or more services, including email and various social media sites. Coordinating so many different services across multiple groups is tedious, challenging, and often results in important information being overlooked or lost. GroupLoop is a single interface that integrates all of the functions users require to effectively communicate with each of their groups. Users can send private or group messages, access contact information for each group member, upload shared multimedia, add events in a group calendar, and participate in forums. They can even view information for multiple groups at once. Feedback from GroupLoop users who have tested these functions in order to communicate with their groups have found it to be “helpful,” “convenient,” and “a service they would like to use.”

Approximately 17 percent of American adults report some degree of hearing loss. Such hearing problems can lead to frustrations and inconveniences in everyday life while listening to or communicating with others. Our team has created a free mobile application, Hear Rite, which diagnoses hearing impairments and provides an economical alternative to costly hearing aids. The first segment of our application takes the user through a hearing assessment, analyzes the user’s hearing capacity and provides feedback on their results. The second part of our application functions as a hearing aid, filtering out undesired pitches and tones while adjusting sound output using a built-in equalizer. The hearing aid utilizes the hearing test results to provide a custom tailored hearing aid to the user along with presets that cater to general sound environments, such as a private conversation or a large lecture hall. Through a series of user studies, we have shown that Hear Rite could be a cost-free alternative hearing aid for people with simple hearing impairment.

Most healthcare institutes have complicated step-by-step operation procedures to ensure safety and privacy protections. Reporting used in routine tasks for healthcare institutes must be customized to meet urgent needs within these organizations. To meet these needs, our project presented a solution using a high-scalability reporting tool: SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), connecting directly to the UW medical database. With SSRS, complicated data extractions can be handled without end users’ involvement; hundreds of reports can be customized and delivered within few seconds.

There are many interruptive events that can affect a global supply chain, such as political unrest, global economics, labor disruptions, natural disasters, and transportation delays. The speed at which a logistics company such as Expeditors International can respond to these events is critical for maintaining a competitive advantage and providing exceptional customer service. Today, flourishing social media is changing how information is sourced and the velocity at which it is being distributed. Our project is to design a social media network monitoring system to help Expeditors utilize timely, accurate, and relevant information on supply chain interruptions and other events that might pose risks to its logistic operations. With the tool we have designed, Expeditors management can proactively respond to these events and consistently meet service commitments while effectively managing costs and risks.

Websites that provide volunteering and donating opportunities often lack a centralized hub for communicating, displaying, and tracking the progress of service projects.  Most organizations have a way of keeping track of projects internally; however, with underserved communities, there may be a lack of resources to enable the efficient monitoring of project development and to obtain expertise on a project topic.  Imara is a web platform that promotes a social and collaborative atmosphere allowing volunteers, community members, donors and subject matter experts to exchange knowledge and contribute up-to-date information on the progress of projects.  This information allows project members to identify areas that need more resources, funding, expertise, or volunteer effort.  Users who evaluated Imara stated that it delivers a simple, informative, and engaging way to get involved with service projects.

Each year, approximately 2 million new immigrants from all over the world arrive in the United States. These newcomers can often find themselves feeling isolated due to language and cultural barriers, which make meeting new people and acclimating to their new environment especially challenging. We built an events based social networking website, called Immingle, designed specifically with the needs of this group in mind. Our solution helps immigrants who share a common language or homeland connect with one another through creating and attending local events. Events can range anywhere from small knitting group gatherings to large cultural music festivals, and can be created by new immigrants, established immigrants, or even local organizations. By providing a resource for both recent and established immigrants alike to connect with one another, Immingle helps newcomers meet friends who have shared similar experiences. These peers can help them overcome some of the challenges that transitioning to life in a new country can pose. Our solution aims to strengthen local immigrant communities by providing a platform with very low barriers to access that encourages making new friends, building support networks, and getting involved in the local community.

Mental health clinicians, researchers, and program managers require good data to make good decisions. The Mental Health Research Network (MHRN) has collected a significant quantity of population data, but action based on this data is hindered without extensive technical training and experience. This limits the data’s impact to improve health care outcomes and performance by preventing a wider audience from using the data to make high-level care and policy decisions. We worked with the Group Health Research Institute to design an interactive tool that transforms health care data into understandable visualizations, which are easy to explore.  Our tool will provide translational research; encourage people to ask questions; and promote data-driven healthcare improvements, ultimately impacting over 11 million patients across the United States currently served by the MHRN.

In 1997 the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas, acquired the private library of the institution’s founder, Dominique de Menil. Since then the library has been housed in an offsite location which makes staff access to it inconvenient and public access impossible. Consisting of about 1,500 items, the library had no formal list or inventory nor was the library publicized. Working with the Menil Collection Library I increased the usability and accessibility of the private library by conducting an inventory and creating searchable finding aid. Now Menil staff, scholars, and visitors will be able to discover what is in the founder’s library including many items found nowhere else in the U.S. This finding aid will also help the librarian manage the special collection.

Maclear eGRC is a governance, risk, and compliance software suite supporting the risk and compliance industry. The application currently supports a SQL based authentication and authorization service. Unfortunately, the usage of a SQL based system is difficult to synchronize information between the Maclear eGRC suite and client applications, therefore creating a mismatch between data exchange formats. Traditional relational databases based authentication systems suffer from vulnerabilities, such as SQL injections, which present a vast array of security concerns. The purpose of this capstone project is to design and implement a module to support Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and single sign on functionality, and obtain knowledge regarding the operational benefits of its implementation.