Capstone Projects | Information School | University of Washington

AjiDex: Expand Your Confidence and Food Palette With Us

Most restaurant menus do not include texture information for their dishes, leaving people with food texture sensitivities to guess which meals won’t trigger an adverse reaction. To address this, we have created a web app that lets users crowdsource texture information and add it to existing restaurant menus. By using our web app, people with food texture sensitivities can confidently go into restaurants knowing they will be able to eat what they order. People with food texture sensitivities will be able to reduce food waste and save money by ordering meals they know they can eat.

Building a Seed Bead Ontology: Making Sense of Seed Bead Color Codes

Japanese seed beads are identified by the color code assigned to each product. Three primary manufacturers assign their own alphanumeric codes, while a wholesaler combined all three identification systems into a new system. This creates confusion among consumers because these systems are not well understood and are not yet cross-referenced. My ontology is the foundation of a knowledge base that will aid in more accurate identification of colors between manufacturer numbers and the corresponding product in the wholesaler’s system. This resource will facilitate accurate color-matching and increase awareness of the variety of seed beads available.

CuriosityBased: 7 Forms of Respect™ Assessment Visualizer

CuriosityBased fosters curiosity within the workplace to help teams and companies build trust, collaboration, and communication. One of their tools is an assessment based on their 7 Forms of Respect™ framework. This framework helps individuals identify how individuals and teams demonstrate respect in the workplace. Their previous system for calculating and visualizing assessment answers was manual and extremely tedious. Our team was asked to automate this process and redesign the results delivery. The resulting product will save time for the CuriosityBased team and allow them to put more effort into services and consulting.

Designing for Trust on Social Media

Social media has changed today’s information and communication world. Rampant mis/disinformation has eroded users’ trust in social media platforms. Through research, we look at how design considerations can influence what makes an information system “trustworthy.” For this project, we are sponsored by the Center for an Informed Public (CIP) and conducted an extensive literature review of 23 papers. We used our research insights to make a design toolkit to help designers building platforms build trust through the design process.

Document Management System Selection for Microsoft Mixed Reality

The Microsoft Mixed Reality team currently lacks a centralized tool to manage policy documents. Our team focuses on recommending the best document management system to our sponsor that has functionalities including automated tagging, access control, version control, and notification. We have taken into consideration factors such as financial cost, usability, scalability, and user experience. Our project provides our sponsor with essential research findings on different DMS tools and valuable insights into improving their document management process, indirectly contributing to improving the efficiency of the overall policy document management workflow.

Generally Readable Informative Documents (GRID)

Oftentimes, those with the most important messages to share have neither the time nor money to create the most effective media for communicating their messages to others. Research has been done on this topic; however, it is largely inaccessible in both cost and writing. GRID is a free, readable, research-based web guide on how to write more readable documents, aimed at those working for social good. It takes research-based guidelines and professional industry practices and makes them easy to digest and implement for any screen-based document.

iKeep for iSchool

Students spend thousands of dollars on a university degree only to forget much of the information learned a few years later. Research shows reviewing information regularly is the key to building long-term information recall. iKeep is a mobile app which provides users with quick, targeted questions based on University of Washington iSchool curriculum to improve recall over time. The mobile application assists students who have taken iSchool core courses in retaining these fundamental skills to remain competitive in both their academic and professional careers.

Improved Interface and Alignment between the Pima County Public Library and Friends of the Library

This project applied insights gained from surveys, focus groups, interviews, and meetings with library administrators, managers, and staff, and volunteers from several Friends of the Library groups. The goal was to inform a new Library administrative liaison role between the Friends and the Library. We began to create training materials, a toolkit for library staff and friends. Next steps involve revision and refinement of existing Friends agreements and charters to support a fruitful partnership. The project team involved collaboration with a library administrator and a consultant on non-profit organizational success, as well as Friends volunteers.

Indigenous Representation in Subject Headings

Internationally used systems such as LC Subject Headings, LC Classification, and Dewey Decimal Classification use misrepresentative or offensive language, marginalize Indigenous topics, and categorize them as things of the past. Through research, interviews, and consultations, our project focused on developing alternative subject headings. The ultimate goal is to reflect the identity of Native students, faculty, and staff at UM and increase their ability to access resources. The project team developed an annotated bibliography and provided the library with recommendations for immediate changes and strategies for continuing the project as part of the library’s commitment to an inclusive library experience.

Internationary

It is very difficult for the numerous international students at UW, coming from countries with a very different cultures, academics, and people, to adjust here. It becomes even harder without having easy access to correct information about important things such as finances, housing etc. We made a one stop website which students can use to easily get information about important things and adapt well to this new place and system and in turn succeed in their lives!

iSchool Capstone

2021