Capstone Projects | Information School | University of Washington

ReSIFT: Media Fact-Checking Reimagined

Misinformation has always been present, but social media has significantly increased its scope, spread, and reach in our world today. Working with the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public (CIP), this project places the SIFT fact-checking strategy in the hands of Android mobile device users. The ReSIFT mobile application assists users in fact-checking articles and expedites the fact-checking process. ReSIFT reduces the amount of time needed to fact-check and educates users on information verification best practices to create a community of information skeptics and critical thinkers.

Resource Management by Smartsheet: Intelligent Team Building and Workload Balancing

Smartsheet Inc. offers a resource planning solution, Resource Management by Smartsheet, and aims to provide intelligent recommendations for staffing work across their customer organizations. Our team, Avatar, focused on defining the best staffing suggestion tool for our sponsor with features that include criteria-based recommendation, staffing needs prediction, experience tracking, and overallocation notification. Our design leverages resourcing data to optimize the utilization of human capital, better predict resource demand for future projects, and reduce dependency on human intervention.

ResumeQuest a Quest to Resume Success

Every year thousands of students leave college looking for a job but don't have a sufficient resume to make them stand out. Additionally, tailoring their resumes to specific industries is a long, tedious process that gets boring and we found that students are more interested in improving their resumes if made into a faster and more fun process. ResumeQuest aims to address this issue by being a fun professional platform that accurately recommends top terms in job applications and industries which helps improve the quality of resumes so the user can be more confident when applying to their first jobs.

SecViz: Learn Network Traffic Analysis With Ease

Cybersecurity is a fast-paced, ever changing field, with new threats around every corner. As a newcomer, learning complex topics such as network traffic analysis, forensic skills, and more presents a steep learning curve that pushes away prospective students. Combining data visualization with Capture The Flag style challenges, SecViz aims to reintroduce the fun in learning the fundamentals, and break through the barriers of entry for cybersecurity students. Students will gain the confidence and investigative thought patterns required to thrive in the world of cybersecurity, mastering the core skills that will remain relevant no matter how the field changes.

Shelp: A homeless shelter review application

Shelp allows users to view information about shelters in one place. Users who are seeking shelters, are able to view shelter information, post and see comments about shelters. We scraped hundreds of shelter data from google maps and allowed shelter organizations to update shelter information on our site once they verify their identity. For shelter administrators, they are able to claim their shelters in our application and modify shelter information. We believe our solution can help shelter users get informed when finding a shelter and for shelter owners to get the most up-to-date information to build community.

Skillet Analytics: Information Management System for Restaurant Data

Skillet Analytics is a new way for Skillet Restaurant Group to analyze business KPIs and track progress among the restaurants. Small businesses lack access to technology to utilize data-driven decision-making. Our team sought to make the powerful tool of data available to Skillet so that they can measure and improve restaurant performance. This project introduces live connection between a database server and KPI dashboard to make retrieving and accessing data seamlessly for employees who work in operations and beyond. The project is implemented using data analysis, database creation, and population and data visualization.

Software Deployment Tracker for Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is cloud-native and runs across multiple regions, making tracking its metadata complex and challenging. The current dashboard involves ad-hoc SQL data queries which is inefficient and inaccessible to non-technical users. Additionally, the dashboard doesn’t provide useful visualizations for analysis. To address these issues, we developed the Software Deployment Tracker which is designed for all team members, from project managers to engineers. Our solution empowers the Microsoft Azure team to effectively monitor global deployments by querying and visualizing deployment data instantly without writing any code.

Spotty: An App to Find Bathrooms

Spotty (Spot a Potty) is a mobile-first web application to help people on the go find public restrooms that fit their needs. Lack of bathroom access is a serious humanitarian and public health issue; good bathrooms are difficult to find, particularly for people who have to be on the move frequently. Spotty addresses this by allowing users to find nearby locations as well as view features and reviews in advance, helping them save time and have better peace of mind.

SustainaBUILD: Helping small businesses adopt sustainable packaging

Packaging and containers currently account for roughly 28% of all solid waste in the United States. Businesses are not incentivized to transition to sustainable packaging when plastic packaging is cheaper and easier to access. SustainaBUILD analyzes the current packaging consumption of small foodservice businesses and recommends sustainable alternatives, informed by current city regulations so businesses can reduce their waste and save time. With the entire process taking less than five minutes, SustainaBUILD dramatically increases the efficiency of sourcing sustainable packaging and allows business owners to dedicate more time to serving their customers and benefiting their communities.

Tadashi - The Ultimate Team Experience

Tadashi aims to give in-class teams positive working experiences when completing their projects. After conducting interviews, we identified three core concepts behind what makes a great team: communication, accountability, and reflection. We implemented those three concepts into a centralized platform with four key features: a teambase, messaging, reflection board, and task management with rolling leadership. Our platform makes a difference because teamwork is more than just completing tasks, it is about learning and applying good foundations that students can take into their careers. Tadashi aims to reduce negative experiences because we know the magic that good teams can create.

iSchool Capstone

2022