In the past decade, the construction industry has been transformed by the use of on-site technology for maximizing efficiency, communication, and data storage.  But one aspect of every project remains under served: the close out, or what the industry calls the “punch” process.   This is the process of identifying every aspect of a project, down to the smallest detail, that needs attention or repair before the building is turned over to the clients. Historically, creating a punch-list is a labor intensive, paper-based process that involves one or more individuals inspecting the new construction, making notes about incomplete or damaged components and then assigning a resource to attend to it. To alleviate this burdensome activity we have created a mobile application that allows construction workers to create, update, sort, view, archive and complete punch-list items on a tablet pc or android phone. Punch-n-Done offers prequalified lists of building components with easy point and click features to help the end user efficiently capture and organize information to distribute to the appropriate resource for completion.

Animal shelters are in need of a technological upgrade to better connect people with animals in need of homes. As the internet becomes the central hub for information exchange, nonprofit shelters now have a necessity to display available animals online. Rescue is a web and mobile application that allows users to browse adoptable animals, provides a system for shelters to create catalogues of their animals and share media with their communities to increase visibility. Based on usability testing, users were able to locate specific information faster than similar applications. Rescue strives to provide a usable and delightful platform for shelters to expose their animals in need to a larger audience.

Have you ever suffered from a bad sleep schedule that you want to get away from? Don’t you know that using your mobile phone to tracks your sleep schedule is super easy? Sleep Fixer is our Windows Phone answer to this problem. It appears as an alarm clock app, tracks users’ sleep schedule, and visualizes the collected data. The app tracks users’ everyday sleep time, wakeup time, and wakeup mood. Then it uses the data to create multiple charts including the average time in bed, the average time of going to bad, the variance of bed time, etc., and generate a Sleep Score. The app provides a simple data structure and vibrant visualization, which enables the user to get a clear picture of how well he/she sleeps. Furthermore, by comparing the sleep scores generated from different time periods, users can interpret whether their sleep quality is improving.

Costco Information System (IS) department manages workflow processes like Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Solution Delivery Method (SDM), to stay ahead of its competition. These processes are very critical to Costco management, as they help to better understand needs of their customers and employees. However, these new workflow processes are extremely complicated and difficult to follow without proper training. In this project, we developed a Gamification strategy for a mobile game application that would help Costco IS employees learn these new processes. It would help enhance their productivity through better process recognition, higher incentives and knowledge certifications. With our strategy, Costco IS employees would easily understand roles and responsibilities within and outside their groups as laid out in these workflow tools. Our Gamification strategy would make their learning fun, engaging and hassle free experience.

Youth librarians are uniquely able to encourage cultural awareness in the populations they serve. Despite increasing emphasis on cultural competence for librarians, many library science programs have no requirement for such training and librarians have never received instruction in cultural competency. The MAP project seeks to create a central hub for librarians to receive training and to access materials and resources that will provide a culturally rich and welcoming environment in libraries.

Companies today are looking to hackers and security professionals to help them secure their assets and protect sensitive information. In this field, there are limited resources for interested individuals to learn and stretch their skills. To address this, we have engineered a website to educate those interested in hacking and security. Our solution acts as a networking platform allowing people of varying skill levels to come together and help each other learn. Through our website, professionals can create and host web challenges to be attacked by sandboxing, the process of duplicating an environment. Users obtain their own unique copy of the challenge in order to complete it at their own pace, communicating with other members for tips and advice. We have successfully created a working prototype that is being currently used by invited members in a beta testing phase. We have a number of security professionals and college students using the site and providing us with feedback on how to continue the project. We hope that our success with this project will provide an innovative solution to hacking and security education.

Most chronically ill patients feel confused, isolated and helpless due to their chronic disease. As a result, risk for depression increases, which in return leads to even more chronic diseases. Triage Project is focused on designing and prototyping a patient based web application that would network patients with a supportive community of fellow patients, doctors, and researchers in the field. Our solution is not a standalone solution to the chronic diseases. It complements other treatments to prevent patients from suffering symptoms of depression. Triage has conducted usability surveys with chronic patients and interviews with healthcare professionals and researchers at Group Health and UW Medicine, to design and evaluate a unique patient based web application. Our next steps are to conduct surveys and interviews to assess the impact of patient based web application on depression of chronic patients.

The UW Libraries initiated a project to create a device-agnostic responsive website in order to integrate a new catalog search system that allows the library website and services can be accessed at any time, any place and by any user. With the purpose of creating a better user experience for the great variety of patrons that include undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty and staff, and the public, we focused heavily on user experience research and design. We updated libraries’ patron personas that include new technology use and library services. To iterate the design quickly and to ensure that the project receives constant user feedback, the Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation method was utilized throughout the project. As a result, new portal and services pages are created, and the information architecture was redefined to better meet the needs of the diverse group of patrons that the library serves.

Current ways of finding UW Medicine clinic information can be challenging. Search engines yield mixed results depending prior knowledge, and the lack of a mobile version of the current UW Medicine website diminishes the user experience on mobile devices. To address these problems and more, I designed a high-fidelity prototype of the UW Medicine Locator - a native mobile android application for finding and navigating to clinics. The application streamlines the process of finding and navigating to over 100 UW Medicine clinics by providing a simple interface, enhanced clinic information organization and retrieval methods, ability to save clinics, view previous findings, and access to onsite navigation using Google Maps Floor Plan.

The UW Police mobile application prototype attempts to address missed opportunities for information sharing by creating an information portal, utilizing established lines of communication, to increase the accessibility of its resources. The app leverages the mobile platform, with software developed using open source tools, to provide public safety resources in a more user-friendly interface in an effort to develop a safer and more informed UW community. The objective is to enhance the efficiency with which the community engages with its Police and in that same token, increasing the UWPD's effectiveness in exchanging information with its community.