Capstone Projects | Information School | University of Washington

Tern

We at Tern are committed to providing curated travel tours, making it possible for everyone and anyone to freely explore any destination and serving you a one-stop solution for all of your travel needs. In our user research, we found that aspiring travelers often find brainstorming and logistics planning for travel to be overwhelming. There are too many sources available, such as Google Reviews, Reddit, Yelp, and Airbnb, which do not have the sole purpose of “Detailed Travel Planning.” With our service, travel planning can be more enjoyable and less burdensome.

The Bandit Problem: Are You Winning Enough?

With the use of A/B Testing, two major challenges are faced by the online subscription industry today, i.e., to maximize conversions of trial users while testing product variants and to address ever changing user preferences. This project involves performance evaluation of Multi-armed Bandit Algorithms, as alternatives to conventional A/B testing, that balances exploration and exploitation during the learning process to quickly identify the overall winning feature variant. Contextual Bandit Algorithms are also explored to predict what works best for a given user based on their attributes. This approach helps optimize the conversion rate and support personalization at the user level.

The Emma B. Andrews Diaries: A Digital Humanities Project

The Emma B. Andrews Diary Project consists of 19 volumes of letters and diaries from the Golden Age of Egyptology (1889-1913). Built in Omeka, the website has not been updated since 2013, yet it has accrued a wealth of content. Our project set out to restructure the information architecture, redesign the metadata by creating linked relationships, and edited the custom theme to improve usability.

The Home Project Calendar

Within King County, there are an estimated 12,000 people experiencing homelessness. Over 250 organizations are working to end homelessness in the area, but there is a lack of communication and coordination between them. The Home Project Calendar, an event sharing platform, bridges the gap between these organizations and provides them with one place to share information about their efforts and events around King County. Organizations can share events to increase visibility of their mission to other nonprofits that contribute to their mission. Through information exchange, the Home Project will increase collaboration and alignment in the fight to end homelessness.

The Red Wheelbarrow Digital Literacy Project

Digital illiteracy persists among adults in the coastal Mississippi area the Jackson-George Regional Library System serves. Adults without computer skills cannot use the Internet to gain employment, access government services, or find healthcare providers. Their lack of basic computer skills is a barrier to accessing government programs that can help them. JGRLS does not have the human power to meet this need. A digital literacy program that trains volunteers to teach digital literacy skils to adults using the public computers and broadband capacity at JGRLS' 8 branches is warranted. The project will lay the groundwork for a digital literacy council.

The San Dewayne Francisco Memorial Archives

Challenge: How to preserve and make accessible materials related to a Central Washington University ROTC alumni missing in Vietnam. Materials were housed in copy paper boxes and binders in the ROTC offices. Solution: Housed the materials in Archival quality boxes and folders. Had cadets scan the materials and uploaded the files to the institutional repository at Central Washington University, ScholarWorks. Impact: The information on the institutional repository will enable cadets to research San Dewayne Francisco for their reports. It will also bring greater awareness of missing servicemen, efforts to find their remains, and the need of fundraising for those efforts.

The Seattle Grunge Music Collection

Patrons, staff, and researchers at The Seattle Public Library have difficulty finding Seattle Grunge music items in the library’s collection. The catalog keyword search, “Seattle grunge”, only produces 24 items. We amassed a Seattle Grunge Collection of both cataloged and uncatalogued materials to ensure that everyone can easily discover and access the library’s current and future holdings of music, movies, books, articles, local zines, posters, fan club newsletters, and other ephemera. We not only provided easy search and access of this collection, we also created a model that can be replicated to develop and preserve other local Seattle music collections.

The Smart Guide

Consumers are buying IoT devices without understanding their security and privacy implications. Traditional mainstream reviews only showcase device features. Consumers remain uninformed about security, but The Smart Guide hopes to change this. Our solution is a buyer’s guide for smart home devices. It helps consumers make an informed decision based on feature, price, and most importantly security. By factoring in cybersecurity in the rating of a product we hope to drive consumers to purchase safer smart home devices in a smarter way.

The Thomas Handforth Digitization Project

Thomas Handforth was an artist, author, and winner of the 1939 Caldecott Medal. After his death, the Tacoma Public Library agreed to archive over 900 pieces of his artwork. The main objective of this capstone was to organize, digitize, and catalog the most fragile and friable pieces in the collection for online accessibility to the public. I scanned and photographed, created metadata, and integrated the digital files of his art into the library’s online catalog. For too long Thomas Handforth has been unknown. By creating this catalog, users will be able to learn more about this incredible artist.

The Untold Story: Experiences of Women with Autism in the Workforce

Women with autism face significant employment challenges due to being women and being with autism. We know very little in the way of research about their experiences. In the "Untold Story" we analyze 40 threads in the Career and Employment Category from the Reddit discussion group 'AsperGirls'. We use Annabi and Lebovitz (2018) Organizational Interventions Mitigating Individual Barriers Framework (OIMIB) to depict the barriers women with autism experience, the individual methods they use to mitigate the barriers, and the role organizational interventions play in mitigating these barriers. Our analysis reveals their stories and the unique challenges and opportunities they experience.

iSchool Capstone

2019