The photographs of John E. Thwaites, a mail clerk sailing throughout Alaska in the early 20th century, offer researchers a valuable glimpse into the maritime, Native American, and industrial history of the region. However, access to this collection is limited due to unprofessional processing that took place decades ago, arbitrarily sorting the photographs into subjects and subsequently losing the gestalt. My project remedies this by intellectually arranging the collection to express the course of Thwaites’ life and work in Alaska. In addition, the creation of a descriptive finding aid and the digitization of the images will enable searchable access to the collection from anywhere in the world. After languishing for decades, this highly compelling collection will gain new appreciation and access and utilization will be more possible than ever before.

Today’s “One Click” culture hides supply chain complexity from consumers. While logistics companies must confront supply chain risk as an everyday part of conducting business, quantifying and mitigating risk isn’t easy. Expeditors International, a global Fortune 500 freight forwarding company, wants to change the way their enterprise-level customers engage with the shipment of their goods by bringing greater visibility to supply chain risk. Route Assess, a risk assessment tool for U.S. transcontinental freight forwarding, allows Expeditors’ professional logistics analysts to measure and communicate the risk associated with a particular shipment to a customer, empowering analysts and customers to jointly tailor mitigation offerings on an individual shipment level. Aggregating crime, weather, commodity, and mitigation offering data, logistics analysts can easily input a shipment details, quantify risk along the route, visualize route data on a map, and then present this comprehensive assessment in a digestible format.

Nearly a million jobs are posted to Craigslist each week that range from landscaping to construction. Craigslist, and similar online platforms, offer little protection or assurance to both job seekers and job posters. Other services that do, such as Labor Ready, require strict guidelines and a long hiring process. Our team has addressed these issues with the creation of Scaffold. Scaffold is an online communication platform that connects people seeking to work with people looking to hire through a quick, direct, and dependable process. Unlike our competitors, we are not an employer, but simply connect our users. With two-way anonymous reviews and a managed messaging system, Scaffold minimizes potential abuse and provides a space for local micro-economies to flourish.

As part of their transition from a paper based circulation system to the online request system Aeon, the Newberry Library recognized the need for a stronger online presence for their unprocessed manuscript collections. Many of these collections were only described in paper inventories. My project addressed this information problem through the creation of collection level encoded archival description (EAD) records. Approximately 300 unprocessed collections now have an online presence in the library’s list of manuscript abstracts, a collection level finding aid, and are available for request in Aeon. Through the creation of these records, enhanced access is available to researchers around the world who may not be able to visit the library. Previously unknown collections now have a new visibility and can provide valuable research opportunities. The library’s archivists can use new interest in these collections to help determine the priority for processing.

Students who want to improve their skills, learn new skills, or build social network may feel frustrated when they cannot find someone to help. On the other hand, a large amount of on-campus activities or resources are sometimes underutilized due to poor-information conditions. To fill the gap between resources and demands, we developed ‘Skill Swap’, an iOS mobile application that allows UW students to build their own profiles, find a partner from whom they can learn or to whom they can offer help, and stay informed of on-campus events that are of their interests. In addition, our app encourages students to share skills, minimize training costs, and build social network. Willing to share skills and learn something new with no expense? Come and try our Skill Swap App!

The Elmer Ogawa Photograph collection is a large and mostly untouched collection of photographs by Elmer Ogawa, a Japanese-American photographer and native Seattleite. Many of Ogawa’s photographs document local Seattle history and social scenes during the mid-twentieth century. The collection has been inventoried but has not been fully appraised and only partly digitized. The project team focused on making the Elmer Ogawa Photograph collection manageable for future development and continued digitization. Through weeding extraneous photographs, assessing the collection for content, and adjusting the finding aid to reflect alterations, the team was able to refine and cultivate the collection. Completion of this project has allowed the University of Washington Special Collections Library to reallocate resources and storage space to other projects while making the Elmer Ogawa Photograph collection easier to maintain, digitize and showcase to the public.

The So-So app is the ultimate night out companion! We tackle the problem of how to easily keep track of friends when out in the city so that everyone is safe and happy. With features like safety zones, friend tracking, and SOS alerts it conveniently fits the needs of anyone’s night out. Initial setup of the app includes choosing your preferred safety settings and connecting with your contacts. When heading out for the night you invite your group and start “Night Out Mode”. Once started, So-So tracks everyone in you group for the night, and applies your preferred safety features until the “Night Out Mode” times out. There is no other app that functions quite like So-So. It’s what the So-So Sober you would want!

U.S. Congress has been reducing appropriated funds and personnel from the DOD since 2001 and cut 25% in inflation dollars since 2011.  Reducing the availability funds creates a need to evaluate how useable facility space and how it’s utilized to support the readiness to defend and support the citizens of the U.S. This project actually addresses the above need for adequate facility space to support state emergencies, identify which facilities need added soldier strength to support the local communities and support EXORD 164-15. As of 7 April 2015 EXORD 164-15: Reduce the Installation Facility Footprint, requires the disposal of all excess and poorly maintain facilities from the inventory to conserve funding.  To the citizens of Washington this project ensures during emergencies theirs a facility nearby to provide shelter, base to destitute food, supplies, personnel and equipment to the community.

Having an exercise partner can provide multiple benefits during a workout. For weight lifters having a spotter when lifting, can allow the participant to lift heavier weights, push through more repetitions, maintain proper form, and most importantly ensure safety throughout the exercise. Our own research has shown that people often enjoy having someone to workout with, but also uncovers the difficulties of finding a training partner. Our app Spottr is a social utility application for mobile devices to help connect local gym goers. Designed in mind for weight lifters, Spottr hopes to make the process of finding a workout partner at your gym as easy as possible. With Spottr, users can create a post looking for a training partner, or reply to other posts to connect with other users to coordinate for more effective, satisfying, and safe work outs.

On Saturday March 22, 2014 the communities of Darrington and Oso, Washington experienced the devastating effects of a massive landslide that destroyed property and resulted in the loss of 43 lives. Recognizing the historical significance of this event, the Darrington Historical Society (DHS) quickly began collecting artifacts and information related to the slide. Identified as a priority by DHS was the need to build an archive that was widely available to the public, helped the community to heal, and also had the potential to aid scientific research and rescue operations planning. Toward this end, our Capstone team worked closely with DHS and UW Special Collections to create a digital archive using the CONTENTdm platform. By creating a digital archive searchable via WorldCat, DHS ensures that the Darrington and Oso communities, general public, and research community can continue to access images, documents, maps, videos, and audio recordings associated with the landslide.