Costco is facing multiple behavioral problems at their IT division including lack of knowledge sharing, motivation to share, lack of transparency in employees skillset and lack of recognition on sharing/improvement efforts by engineers. We are creating BMS, The Badge Management System, to solve these behavioral problems of Costco IT. BMS not only is a software application but it also brings set of business processes in the place. Main purpose of this system is to motivate people to share knowledge among the Costco Family and award recognition on their effort. BMS, with simple concept of awarding badges, will increase knowledge sharing between Costco IT employees drastically, help find right people to ask questions or to consult on their projects, motivate individuals to learn more or learn something new to gain badges to increase their recognition and ultimately their status quo. 

Since the 1970s, the Refugee Forum of King County has been a vital source of information and networking for service providers serving refugees and newly arrived immigrants in the Puget Sound region. However, they relied on paper copies, monthly meetings, and word of mouth to share ideas. This has made it difficult for them to move forward with new goals and reach out to potential new members. Following principles of user-centered design, we helped the organization identify its information needs and built a website tailored to its goals. The process included user testing, content strategy, and documentation to ensure a smooth handoff. The website has the potential to improve the speed and efficiency with which service providers access information about community resources, thus enabling them to better help refugees and newly arrived immigrants in the region. Furthermore, it can serve as a platform for advocacy as the RFKC grows.

Millions of people are suffering from cancer and tumors. We need to make a difference! With dedication to ensure patients can receive the most effective treatment possible, the Presage online monitoring system are developed to improve the cancer drug development process and gap current technology limitations. The web application provides online data monitoring by enabling scientists to cross check data and ensure both accuracy and precision of predicted results by switching different classification algorithms. Also, they are able to interact with charts and graphics demonstrating historical data comparison and distribution. Even without accessing the app, they will receive highly customized digest reports containing details about outlier images. We make information intuitive and innovative.

In 2012, an estimated 421,000 people were injured from crashes involving distracted drivers. This is a 9% increase from the previous year. Locking drivers out of their phone is not a way to combat this issue. Instead, we have developed an Android lockscreen application that allows users to set commonly used driving apps so that they have quick access to them when needed, as well as provide data via the phones’ sensors to show how safely the users drive. Our app not only reduces time spent fumbling through the phone to find specific apps, but it also tells the user they might be an often-distracted driver. We found that through the use of our lockscreen replacement, testers spent up to 13 less seconds browsing to an app they wanted to use, indicating that our app would help drivers pay more attention to the road.

Truly an urban retreat, the Washington Park Arboretum is a beautiful, 230-acre oasis tucked away in Seattle’s Montlake neighborhood. Since 1934, scientists and volunteers have collected data on over 11,000 plant species, which have recently been digitized. This plant database, as well as an Arboretum map highlighting trails and landmarks, is formatted for use on computers, and difficult for visitors to access while at the park. We have designed a mobile application to put this information in the hands of visitors, enriching their overall park experience. Application features include customizable trail loops, information on gardens, park maps and a GPS-enabled plant lookup capability that easily locates plants around app users. Our project has involved a research phase, app sketching, wireframing, usability tests and an interactive prototype built in Axure. Stop by to see the final design and learn all about the application features!

In order to generate more information from historical weather and environmental records, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) created the Arctic Rediscovery Project. One initiative of the Arctic Rediscovery Project is the crowdsourcing transcribing website, Old Weather. Old Weather facilitates the digitization and transcription of historical images, logbooks, and documents by dedicated volunteers and students. As a part of their collection, NOAA has thousands of images featuring personnel from the Geodetic Survey, academic institutions, and crew from old research vessels. These images were digitized, but until now the public had no access to the collection. By constructing a searchable and browse-able database and designing a functioning website to display these images, our capstone project creates an access point for NOAA researchers, historians, relatives, and Old Weather volunteers.

Teaching video editing is a time consuming task that requires much one on one time between a teacher and student. As class time and office hours are limited, there is a ceiling on how much instruction a student can receive during a course. Furthermore, with only a finished product to evaluate, it is difficult for teachers to suggest improvements to cutting room processes used by students. To increase visibility into students’ processes and allow for a more iterative feedback loop, an online collaborative workspace has been created. In this workspace, visibility into processes was added through real-time collaboration and revision history. Coupling these features with an ability to give and request targeted feedback at any point in the process allows students increased access to a teacher’s wealth of knowledge.

Food Detective is a mobile application that empowers those with dietary restrictions to understand what is in their food. The main feature is a barcode scanner that matches a user’s dietary needs against the contents of a product. This will allow users quickly and easily answer one question: “Can I consume this product?” This is the single most important question for anyone living with a restriction. By enabling them to quickly get this answer, we increase their chances of eating within their guide lines and improving their quality of life. Our application is available on both Android and iOS, both applications implement the core scanning functionality, a sharing and saving system so that users can keep track of products they like, and alert their friends about potential products they may want to buy. Through this simple system, we hope to help those with special diets live a healthy and productive life.

Nearly 26 million Americans suffer from diabetes. Poorly controlled diabetes exacerbates serious health complications. To assure diabetic control, patients need to have meticulous monitoring of their blood sugars and limit their calorie and carbohydrate intake. Diabetic patients face daily challenges in planning meals, eating out, or navigating restaurant choices and menu offerings that best fit their strict dietary needs. To address this critical need, we are introducing a mobile application that utilizes smartphone features including a camera and GPS to identify restaurant menus that cater to specialized diets, and analyzes and recommends menus that meet user’s dietary goals. This application also enables users to quickly analyze and calculate pre-packaged food and recipes, as well as track their daily and weekly carbohydrate and calorie load. Based on conducting several user tests and receiving expert advices, our application enables users to easily find food options that fit their requirements.