As the “big data” era’s arriving, generating accurate and timely information from data has become the key to the success of any organizations. It is crucial to deliver high quality data efficiently. However, traditional methods (e.g. ETL) could be slow and costly. Data virtualization is a technology that can solve these problems. It is an important part for an agile, cost-effective data management infrastructure. By using data virtualization tools, the delivery of data will become fast, flexible, and efficient. Data virtualization is a technology that has great impacts on business. By understanding Russell Investments’ data management infrastructure, we researched on different data virtualization tools, and recommended software based on the company’s environment.  Our project helps Russell Investments with their decision-making regarding the acquisition of the technology. It will certainly help them to achieve better business performance.

As Costco’s business expands at a rapid pace, new lines of business result in added complexity for their information systems. As a result, the inter-connection between different lines of business has been obscured, and systems isolation has increased across the organization. Our project established inter-connectivity among different entities using an Enterprise Architecture Model.  We focused on technology aspects like security, infrastructure, and information, mapping these elements to suitable components within the lines of business.

UW Medicine’s data centers are located in a ten mile radius within the Puget Sound area, and could be impacted by the same disaster. Our project is helping the IT Services Data Center team prepare for a remote DR site to improve information assurance. By applying HIPAA DR guidelines to refine and document backup, monitoring, and data center DR processes; ongoing efforts for process improvement that address continuously evolving technology, and an increasing dependency on IT for quality patient care can be assured. This will result in increased systems availability enabling UW clinicians to provide the best healthcare when it’s needed most.

Open access to scholarly publications nurtures the collaborative nature of impacting research. For biomedical researchers, the National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy (NIHPA) also makes it a requirement to ensure continued and future funding of their work. Completed in collaboration with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s (FHCRC) Arnold Library, this project aimed to assess the NIHPA compliance of publications from one biomedical research institute in order to understand their past adherence to this policy and provide recommendations towards optimizing the access of future publications. This included the development and population of a publication-tracking database – enabling the analysis of the institute’s past compliance rate and compliance-related services (library interventions) – and a comparison of these local tracking efforts to the new NIH Compliance Monitor tool. Based on this work, recommendations for the future tracking, assessment, and improvement of the FHCRC’s public-access compliance were provided.

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.

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.

CommunityConnect is an interactive application licensed by King County Library System (KCLS) that uses geographic information systems (GIS) technology to map market segmentation data, library circulation data, and census data in order to help librarians pinpoint areas of potential outreach in their communities. However, KCLS administrators determined that librarians have been struggling to apply it at their branches. We conducted a needs assessment, via an online survey, face-to-face interviews, and observations, to identify the obstacles preventing librarians from successfully using the software. Based on our findings, we produced an in-depth analysis of CommunityConnect’s uses at one KCLS branch to serve as a model for other branches in the future. We also developed a set of recommendations for future training on CommunityConnect.

Social influence in the physical world can be correlated with intangible attributes like charisma, attraction, and charm. In translation to a digital context, the concept of influence is still very much connected to these types of human elements, but their impact becomes measurable. The value in determining how much impact an individual has on a specific topic of interest is becoming clearer as more companies depend on digital communities for product awareness. Using a defined metric for domain-specific impact factor in conjunction with predictive modelling, we are able to visualize some interesting trends of influence among Twitter users. Not only can these findings assist in integrating social media into an effective marketing model, they can potentially outline a more direct return on investment.

Gibberin, a spoken message application for iOS, is an effective alternative to texting. Using Gibberin as a voice communicator with no transcription to text allows recipients to listen instead of read. My research project compares the effectiveness of texting and spoken message in terms of speed and quality.  Through interviews and usability testing, spoken message seemed to be the more effective communication medium, but is it the preferred method of communication remains to be seen.  We have seen voice-to-text change the way users communicate. By taking the next step in changing how we communicate, the value of simplicity and efficiency can be modeled by Gibberin.