Students put data to work in Web development class

Students in the Information School’s Client-Side Web Development class have been spending part of their summer doing interesting things with data.

Got a song stuck in your head? Tisha Trongtham tapped into the Spotify API to create “Your Next 5 Songs,” an application that recommends five more songs based on one you like. The idea was based on the Seattle Public Libraries’ “Your Next 5 Books,” in which librarians make recommendations based on a book you like.

Stephen Rimbakusumo had a different spin on Spotify. He made a guessing game in the vein of “Name That Tune.” Enter the name of an artist and then see how many songs you can identify based on short snippets.

Rimbakusumo also created a map using crowd-sourced data from Deadspin on police-involved shootings from fall 2014. You can alter the map to show whether the person shot was wounded or killed, armed or unarmed, and male or female.

Jennifer Yoakum used the same data on police shootings to different effect. In her data visualization, you can layer the data based on whether the shooting was fatal. You can also highlight incidents in which more than 25 shots were fired.

The INFO 343 course, taught by iSchool lecturer Michael Freeman, covers the skills and techniques needed to create effective Web applications. Among their other assignments, students completed mobile-friendly Web pages for their final projects. Freeman will teach the class again this fall.