iSchool Capstone

2023

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Howler: A Place That's Here to Hear Your Howl

University campuses across the nation find themselves in a mental health crisis and the University of Washington is no exception. With campus resources overburdened, our goal is to provide a resource which strengthens student resilience by positively affecting conversations about mental health. Howler is an anonymous online forum made just for UW students that allows them to safely and creatively express their experiences and find solidarity among their peers. Howler's diverse system of forums, or "packs," curates stories and reinforces community, and its multimedia storytelling supports connection and health coping processes.
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Hybrideation: Creative Solutions to Epic Problems

Our team was tasked with updating the Fortnite Creative Documentation and Unreal Editor Fortnite keyword taxonomy and processes to improve engagement, scope, and scalability. We evaluated the current documentation and gameplay to build our foundational knowledge of the issues in the space. Our next step involved interviewing team members to uncover areas of opportunity. We made changes to the current taxonomy based on feedback. Lastly, we developed a governance plan to create standards for maintaining and modifying the taxonomy as the space evolves. Our efforts will help onboard users, remove roadblocks, and increase the usability of the taxonomy.
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iConnect: Helping UW Students Build Connections With Alumni

Many college students have difficulties connecting with alumni of interest despite the current opportunities offered to them, but networking is crucial to college students’ success. Engaging with alumni allows students to access information and gain insights that help them pursue their academic and career goals. Our solution is iConnect, a simple web application that allows college students and alumni to engage with each other and find others they want to connect with. This project provides a platform for students and alumni to form relations with each other and expand their network while supporting their academic and career development.
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Implementing Change: A Cultural Humility Resource Guide for Health-related Programs and Services

Sponsored by the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM), Region 5, this capstone project focused on developing a cultural humility resource guide for health-related library programs and services. Cultural humility is “a practice of self-reflection on how one’s own background and expectations impact a situation, of openness to others’ determining the relevance of their own identities to any given situation, and of committing to redress the effects of power imbalances” (American Library Association). Accessible through the NNLM’s curated digital resources collection, this guide supports the implementation of equitable and inclusive services for libraries and community-based organizations.
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Interactive Data Visualization for Distributed Acoustic Sensing

Geohazards in the Pacific Northwest cause significant annual financial losses. To address this, the University of Washington's Photonic Sensing Facility (PSF) collects seismic data using advanced Distributed Acoustic Sensing technology. Their primary objective is to develop a user-friendly web application for widespread data access and visualization. The target audience includes researchers, public scientists, geohazard enthusiasts, and educators. This initiative aims to enhance geohazard monitoring, mitigate risks, and promote knowledge sharing. PSF's efforts contribute to addressing the pressing issue of geohazards monitoring while facilitating collaboration and informed decision-making.
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iSchool Student Services: Automating Academic Advising with ISAAC

The iSchool Advising Team, along with other educational student services, encounter obstacles in delivering swift guidance due to outdated technologies and an ever-expanding student-to-adviser ratio. In response, we introduce ISAAC (Informatics Student Auto Advising Cyclopedia), an open-source information architecture that centralizes advising information. By incorporating advanced features like searchable indices and data analytics, ISAAC facilitates prompt assistance for basic student inquiries and enables advisers to prioritize complex student interactions. With its extensible nature, ISAAC revolutionizes advising with the potential to adapt to future student service requirements, guaranteeing enhanced efficiency and accessibility to advising information for everyone.
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iSchool Student Services: Improving the Transfer Student Experience with DawgTransfer

Prospective transfer students often encounter obstacles when preparing to transfer to a four-year university. The process can be complex and difficult to navigate, resulting in a lower success rate and a higher risk of dropping out. Working with the University of Washington's student service department, we aimed to improve our support systems for transfer students and develop "Dawgtransfer". Dawgtransfer is a comprehensive platform featuring accessible and user-friendly tools that helps transfer students in Washington State navigate the transfer process more efficiently, while reducing workloads for academic advisors.
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Jeeva Health: Redesigning Digital Mental Health Resources

Campus health centers often experience high demand for mental health services, particularly during winter months in the Seattle, WA area. Our project aims to evaluate the feasibility of using a mobile/smartphone app as an additional or primary resource for low acuity, high demand services. By offering this digital resource, we hope to relieve pressure on campus health centers and provide students with accessible and convenient mental health support. The deliverables include a student-facing mobile app and a dashboard to track the occurrence of mental health issues on campus. Our team will evaluate the effectiveness of the app in meeting the needs of students. Our project assesses the feasibility of a mobile app as a low acuity, high demand mental health resource for Seattle campus health centers. This digital solution can alleviate pressure on centers during peak periods, offering accessible and convenient support to students. Deliverables include a student app and dashboard to track mental health trends. Our team will evaluate the app's effectiveness in meeting student needs.
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Juno

Juno is a mobile application that provides evidence-based recovery protocols to patients recovering from C-section surgery. The app, created in partnership with medical professionals and recovery experts at UW Medicine, aims to reduce the incidence of post-surgery complications in the first weeks after surgery through daily check-ins, home care routines, and communication with medical staff, addressing the problem: "How might low-income mothers who have received a cesarean surgery within the Greater Seattle Area receive information on recovery care and warning signs of complications so that they can improve recovery outcomes in the first two weeks after surgery?"
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Labor Archives of Washington Assessment Project

The Labor Archives Assessment Project is a project to assess the status of the Labor Archives of Washington (LAW)'s collections in terms of their level of description, preservation or conservation concerns, housing quality, and more. This information was added to UW Special Collections' ArchivesSpace platform via its assessment module, which allows information about the status of collections to be linked to their accession records within ArchivesSpace. This module is currently underutilized in UW Special Collections, and this project seeks to serve as an example of the beneficial use of the ArchivesSpace assessment module.