At the end of each academic year a large number of household goods are thrown away by university students. However, most of these items are still usable. Many students struggle to find affordable ways to buy furniture, household goods and clothing. For students wishing to buy these goods secondhand, platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist create significant challenges in the areas of safety and accessibility. To solve these challenges we created Jasper, a trading platform for UW students to buy and sell goods in a convenient, affordable, safe and sustainable fashion.

In the US, teenage students receive sex education as part of their health curriculum. However, conventional sex education does not fully address the emotional and psychosocial aspects of relationships and teenagers often lack safe spaces to share information. LEX is a game with scenarios that helps teenagers learn about common issues and practical solutions. Through better understanding of the emotional and psychosocial aspects of sex, teenagers are able to establish healthier relationships in adolescence and beyond.

Did you know anxiety and depression has increased by a massive 25% since 2020? Did you also know that 20% of American adults who struggle with mental health are unable to find affordable counseling? ListeningPal, a PNW-based company that provides mental health peer support, is here to combat the issues of the inaccessible and costly nature of counseling. Our team was thrilled to address this disparity by bringing life to the ListeningPal app where users can schedule thirty-minute appointments with ListeningPal’s trained peer support staff and be heard, understood, and valued all while staying anonymous and saving money and time.

The pandemic and the shift to remote work have made it more difficult for college students to meet new people and make deeper connections with those with common interests. Based on student interviews, we found that the majority of the participants did not stay in touch with their peers after the class quarter ended, and the main reasons behind this were due to the lack of initiative where it was hard to “break the ice” outside of classwork. We designed a simple application that would prompt those working in teams to find common interests and spark conversations to deepen relationships.

Pawdy is a free, secure, and accessible pet sitting website designed for UW students. As our furry friends have become a crucial part of our life, the need for pet sitting has grown exponentially. Many students have to sacrifice personal life for their pets due to the high cost of pet sitting. With Pawdy, students can find other UW students to sit their pets for free. Students can request pet sitting and interested student pet owners can contact them to make arrangements. Pawdy provides convenience for pet sitting, forms a close-knit community around the campus, and develops relationships around their interests in pets.

Both transportation and car production generate a large share of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to negative environmental impacts. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a shortage of vehicles for rentals, reducing college students’ access to vehicles when they need them. QuickTrip aims to solve this problem through a marketplace model. QuickTrip is a mobile car-sharing platform that allows students at the University of Washington in need of a car to rent a car from their friends, making the benefits of point-to-point transportation accessible to a larger audience.

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.

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.

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.

I created a prototype for a redesigned suite of library staff tools to replace a defunct web portal for the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library. I evaluated what functionalities the library's staff most needed in a tool suite and focused on the two primary functionalities of list-making and material withdrawals. This tool suite was designed using interviews and observational research to be approachable, helpful, and easy to learn. In addition, I focused on clear documentation and resources to lay the groundwork for technical implementation of the program in the future.