iSchool Capstone

Award Winner

2016

TUNE Onboarding - Reducing Complexity Through User Centered Design

User onboarding is critical in helping new customers successfully adapt to a product. Currently, TUNE’s innovative but extremely complex mobile marketing products provide minimal onboarding assistance for new users. This results in high drop off rates and new customers choosing competitor products. Our team set out to tackle this onboarding problem using the design process. We performed extensive research and competitive analysis to test a combination of new and existing onboarding patterns. Informed by this research and testing, we created a new set of patterns that would solve our sponsor’s specific onboarding issues. When implemented, these new patterns will not only help new users find the product’s core value faster but also lower the number of rudimentary questions that support team and sales engineers need to answer. Overall, this will help acquire new customers, retain existing customers and increased revenue.

UW GAMER Group Video Game Discovery Engine

UW GAMER (GAME Research) Group has developed the UW/SIMM Video Game Metadata Schema. This Video Game Discovery Engine is constructed in order to implement the schema to catalog video games, and also to share this achievement to support the use of games in entertainment, education and science. The website enables users to find video games by searching or browsing through approaches that are more in quantity and better in quality when comparing to traditional websites. For example, users can browse by progression and visual style to discover video games on this engine. At this stage, our team has developed the website beta version and conducted user testing on visual design and functional design.

Vantage

With the current number of political news sources and media outlets available, trying to stay up to date with politics can be quite overwhelming. Whether it be contradictory views or media bias, the political news landscape is becoming more complex and oversaturated. Many of these news sources can be dense and hard to navigate, making finding the content you actually want a daunting task. Vantage is a political news aggregation engine that simplifies the process of discovering, reading, and internalizing the latest news from the most popular political news sources. Our solution combines multiple news sources into a single consolidated news feed, making it quick and easy for users to navigate the potential bias of any one news source. Vantage makes consuming political news quick and effortless so that readers spend more time learning and less time searching.

Vision Zero Dashboard & Interactive Map Tool

As part of Seattle’s ongoing mission to improve traffic safety, the Seattle Department of Transportation adopted the initiative Vision Zero, a plan to end traffic-related deaths and serious injuries by 2030. While Vision Zero’s progress is closely monitored internally by SDOT and other government officials, there is currently a lack of data made available to the general public. Our Capstone project aims to solve this problem. Our solution is composed of an information-driven dashboard that shows Seattle’s high-level traffic collision trends as well as an interactive map tool that allows users to view aggregated and individual collisions with specific collision details. It is our hope that the information presented by our project will not only provide traffic enthusiasts the necessary data they desire but also inform Seattleites on traffic statistics so they can become safer commuters. With everyone’s help, we can reach our goal by 2030 and Seattle can truly live up to being one of the safest cities in the country.

We The People: Empowerment Through Design

The Indian Judicial System has an unfavorable public image. Layers of organizational, procedural and administrative intricacies pose challenges for citizens, around discoverability and consumability of legal information. Out of over 75 judicial websites that currently exist, over 90% are outdated, poorly designed, and lack a consistent structure, further impacting the trustworthiness of the system. 67% of citizens are more likely to trust their government if it is accessible online (Deloitte, e-Governance 2015). However, citizens require more than an online presence; they need a judicial system to be a beacon of trust, efficiency and consistency. Our team has used Design Science Research methodology to transform traditional approaches towards designing judicial portals. Using National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission of India as a case-in-point, we have redesigned their website by changing the underlying information architecture, redefining content strategy and employing an empathic design pattern. Our contribution to the cause of better jurisprudence is a knowledge artifact - an academic paper outlining a scalable and repeatable process that can be used to develop or re-design any judicial portal. Through this project, we will equip governments with a framework for bridging information gaps in digital governance and improve public perception through value-driven, citizen-centered design.

2015

Achilles

The $30 billion physical therapy (PT) industry is projected to grow 7% annually (HarrisWilliams&Co.). Despite this growth, current PT practices often leverage low-tech guidance, involve minimal patient-therapist communication, and do not provide a means for accountability. The PT industry is on the rise, and it’s time for PT technology to catch up. So, how do we help physical therapists serve their patients while guiding and motivating patients to get better faster? The answer is Achilles, a fully customizable physical therapy application that amplifies the patient-therapist relationship to provide guidance and motivation throughout the rehabilitation process. The therapist interface provides consistent insights into patients’ at-home progress as provided by the patient interface, effectively bridging the gap between office visits. Achilles augments the physical therapy experience and in turn, patients are able to better manage their injuries and get better faster.

Artifacts of Loss: Memorial Artists’ Books

The Book Arts Collection at the UW Libraries Special Collections includes modern artists’ books as well as works on bookbinding, typography, and other historical printing topics. As a non-circulating library, Special Collections must rely on tools such as exhibits to show users the depth and range of their materials. "Artifacts of Loss" is a unique exhibit installed to highlight a selection of meaningful and evocative artists’ books. In addition to the exhibit itself, tangible results of the project include an exhibit catalog, and a comprehensive list of considered works, which will be used by the collection’s curator and catalogers to improve thematic subject headings. The exhibit allows greater visibility of the Book Arts Collection to prospective users. Beyond that, it addresses a universal, yet deeply personal, aspect of life. The feedback we have received has illustrated the incredible impact this exhibit has had on viewers.

Attracting Millennial Shoppers

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.

Cisco Dash

The proliferation of Internet connected devices in the home has brought with it a disparate array of user interfaces. Use of multiple devices often means changing from one interface to another, yielding a disjointed experience. Further, a massive amount of information is collected and stored in these devices. Cisco Dash is a web application that serves as a single location to view and use Internet of Everything devices. It also provides an enterprise-grade analytics platform to give users the capability of making smart living decisions at home.

Coordinate

Nowadays, nobody’s schedule is the same and a significant amount of time is wasted trying to find common openings for group meetings. While there have been other services created to try and address this problem, they have major issues including poor user interface and a lengthy data entry process. Coordinate was created by our team to solve this problem and address the critical flaws in the existing tools. Coordinate is an online scheduling platform that allows users to quickly organize schedules together to find meeting times for the entire group. After receiving a link from the host, all a user needs to do is use our click-and-drag entry calendar to indicate their availability and our system will identify the optimal time for the group to meet. By simplifying event scheduling, we hope to allow the groups to have more time to improve their event, rather than wasting it comparing schedules.