2023 Spring Capstone Projects

Reducing public information requests through improved website usability: A UX case study of IRRIS at the UT Austin

The Office of Institutional Reporting, Research and Information Systems(IRRIS) is a central organization at UT Austin that is responsible for maintaining campus statistics related to students and faculty. The project's agenda was to improve the usability of data available on the IRRIS website, thereby reducing public information requests received by the organization. Part 1 involved gathering UX research insights to enhance the website visitor experience. Part 2 focused on designing a data visualization for the website to deliver data insights to audiences with varying levels of data literacy. Tools used were Figma, Optimum Workshop, Lucidchart, Excel, and Tableau.

Erin Anderson

Professional Experience Project

Ascension St. Vincent Evansville Medical Library

with: Brad Reel

Positively Impacting Patient Care through Curated Medical Resources for Healthcare Providers

According to Brettle et al.s (2016) study, research demonstrates that medical librarians contribute to a wide range of outcomes both immediately and in the future. Their study found 39% of users of medical librarian services reported a positive impact on the quality of patient care and 45% reported that librarian services ensured interventions were based on best practice or current evidence (Brettle et al., 2016). This project aimed to provide curated information on relevant journals, eBooks, and professional medical organizations to healthcare providers at Ascension St. Vincent Evansville. In collaboration with the medical librarian, I created research guides for resources on clinical practice guidelines, oncology, and pediatrics. The process involved developing effective search strategies for specific areas of medical care, conducting subject research to select and evaluate current, credible, and accurate resources, and documenting tool-specific search strategies to promote information literacy. The desired outcomes for this project are that patient care and clinical decision-making will be positively impacted at Ascension Hospitals after healthcare providers access reliable information in curated research guides.

Neal Baker

Professional Experience Project

Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

with: Olivia Solis, David Zepeda

Tailoring Methods for Description and Access in Digital Audiovisual Collections

This project aims to improve descriptive metadata workflows for digital audiovisual materials at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History through two primary activities. The first activity is the development of a concise taxonomy that defines terms for use in the genre field of a digital object's metadata record. Terms are taken from the FAST subject terminology schema and are chosen to accommodate the breadth of the Briscoe Center's unique A/V holdings while reducing ambiguity. The second activity involves researching and implementing services for the automated generation of audio transcripts. By building a tailored workflow around a flexible transcription API, archivists at all levels of technical experience are enabled to produce transcripts for newly digitized materials as well as batches of files from the backlog.

Sneha Balakrishnan

Professional Experience Project

The University of Texas at Austin

with: Prof. Ying Ding

Designing an Interpretable ICU Length of Stay Prediction Dashboard using eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)

Looking to revolutionize ICU care, this project, led by Prof. Ying Ding at the University of Texas at Austin, aims to create an Explainable AI (XAI) dashboard that accurately predicts patients' length of stay (LoS) while highlighting critical features that impact LoS for patient cohorts and individuals. With the help of XAI methods like SHAP, the project endeavors to provide transparent and interpretable AI that can help clinicians make informed decisions. The project's goal is to calculate Interpretable Risk Scores and continuously improve the 'What-if' page, allowing users to compare and modify different cases. The dashboard includes an individual patient page and a what-if page, enabling users to modify factors and visualize their impact on LoS.

Rachel Barnett

Professional Experience Project

McNay Art Museum

with: Leslie Straus

Organization, Migration, and Digitization of the McNay Art Museum’s Photography Materials

The objectives of this project were to reorganize the image library server of the McNay Art Museum, located in San Antonio, Texas, eradicate duplications, and weed out unnecessary materials. Alongside these objectives, I planned and began execution of the migration of images from the server to Sharepoint and Preservica, depending upon the image file sizes. I added metadata to the images uploaded to Preservica. Besides the images already digitized and located on the server, the McNay Art Museum houses hundreds of undigitized photos, of which I began the process of digitizing and uploading to the appropriate locations.

Emma Bekele

Professional Experience Project

Pottsboro Library

with: Dianne Connery

Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at a Rural Texas Public Library

This project aims to develop a DEI initiative at the Pottsboro Library, a rural public library. While the city of Pottsboro is majority white, the library seeks to expand its reach throughout the entire county, which is more diverse. In this project, I have suggested local partnerships for the library, recommended diverse books, and written a DEI training guide based on research and best practices and a production of a DEI training guide for the primarily white library board. This will improve equity in Pottsboro and put the library in a better position to petition the county for additional funding.

Vasupradha Bhat Belman

Professional Experience Project

IBM

with: Cris Gonzalez

Time-based policies - Identity and Access Management (IAM)

This project aims to design time-based policies for Identity and Access Management (IAM) to enable resource admins to manage access privileges based on time and date. IAM plays a crucial role in ensuring that the right entities are granted the appropriate permissions to access cloud resources. The problem addressed is the need for finer access control, allowing only authorized accounts to access resources during a specified time period. The solution proposed is the use of time-based access policies, which restrict access based on time and date, reducing the risk of security breaches. These conditions can be set up to provide one-time temporary access during a specific time and date range, or they can be configured for recurring weekly access. The goal is to provide users with a delightful user experience while ensuring that security is not compromised.

Taniya Bhosale

Professional Experience Project

John Deere

with: Kelly Sikkema

Accessibility of heatmaps used in John Deere machinery - Looking for ways to enhance the accessibility of heatmaps for people with color blindness

The project aimed to explore the issue of heatmap accessibility in the context of John Deere's digital interfaces. Heatmaps in John Deere's machines are utilized to provide farmers with critical information about their farms, but the predominant use of red and green colors in these heatmaps could pose significant accessibility issues for people with color blindness/ color vision deficiency. The project involved investigating the prevalence of this problem and analyzing how other organizations were addressing similar issues. The research findings indicated that this was a widespread issue, and several solutions were proposed, including the use of alternative color palettes, patterns, and annotations. The project concluded with recommendations for John Deere to consider implementing a combination of these solutions to enhance the accessibility of their heatmaps and ensure that farmers with color vision deficiency can utilize their machines with ease.

Raghu Bommana

Professional Experience Project

UT Austin

with: Unmil Karadkar

Improvements in Space Situational Awareness through Better Data Integration

The ASTRIA project's goal is to make Earth-orbiting objects safer and more sustainable by using data from several near-Earth space observatories. The data, however, are not sent in a uniform format and must be transformed and integrated before they can be stored in a Neo4j database. This project will improve cross-source object recognition, the ASTRIA data integration pipeline, the consistency of data transformations, and the efficiency with which data may be downloaded from many sources. This project focuses on studying the multiple data sources involved and performing quality checks and designing metrics for data integrity.

Ashley Bower

Professional Experience Project

Travis County Archives

with: Christy Costlow

Preserving Public Memory: Designing A Digitization and Preservation Plan for the Travis County Archives’ Commissioners Court Recordings

The Travis County Commissioners Court is responsible for policymaking and performing the administrative functions of the county government. Their meetings are recorded as a matter of public record, and they are housed within the Travis County Archives. The goal of this project was to evaluate the Travis County Archives collection of Commissioners Court recordings, which go back almost 40 years. My work involved surveying the extent of the collection and evaluating best practices for digitization, preservation, and access. It also included consulting with government departments and vendors to investigate options for digitization services and cloud storage. The recommendations provided in the final report will help the Travis County Archives assess how they will provide long-term access to recordings in the future.

Rosalind Bradshaw

Professional Experience Project

Texas State Library and Archives Commission

with: Rebecca Romanchuk

Processing Texas Library Association Records for TSLAC

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC) is the designated repository for the Texas Library Associations (TLA) archival materials. For my project, I assisted TSLAC by processing about 85 cubic feet of materials received from the TLA in 2021 and 2023. For my project, I have taken the following steps: I made an accurate digital inventory of the materials using excel spreadsheets and a preliminary inventory from the TLA, physically arranged the records to adhere to TSLACs arrangement standards by re-aligning materials within their boxes, shifting materials to ensure each box is not under- or over-filled, and separating out duplicate and non-archival materials. Materials that have been deemed to not have archival value will either be returned to TLA or disposed of, with TLAs consent and direction. Then I created a finding aid for the records in ArchivesSpace. Additionally, I incorporated all the previous TLA finding aids and container lists into my finding aid to create one comprehensive finding aid that can be updated with future donations from the TLA and better assist TSLAC in making the TLA records discoverable and available.

Katlyn Brinkley

Professional Experience Project

Baptist Health System Jacksonville

with: Julian Ammons

Creating a how-to guide for UX professionals to implement industry standard processes within healthcare DevOps teams

While healthcare organizations may seem like an unconventional setting for tech, digital products in these settings are becoming increasingly common, meaning the need for human-centered design is imperative. As the first and only UX architect on the DevOps team at Baptist Health System, Jacksonville, I will focus this project on creating a how-to guide for healthcare organizations to implement industry standard UX processes into their Agile DevOps product lifecycles. I will speak to UX industry experts from established tech companies to understand their roles in the UX tech space and gather qualitative data on their recommendations to inform my approach to establishing new formal UX processes. Gaining insights from experienced UX designers will highlight relevant insight on how to best implement UX methods in the software development process to ensure all clinical stakeholders are receiving innovative, user-centered digital solutions, as well as provide a comprehensive framework for new UX designers in healthcare organizations to use as their research and design teams grow.

Frank Bross

Professional Experience Project

LBJ School of Public Affairs

with: Kendra Parrish

Legacy Media Preservation Assessment and Digitization Project at the LBJ School

Within the basement of the LBJ School, roughly 70 boxes of a variety of mix-media were left in various mixed boxes. These contained a number of formats such as reel-to-reel audio and film, U-Matic cassette tapes as well as VHS, Cassette and a number of photographs all dating from as early as 1968. This project seeks to help the LBJ School to establish greater intellectual control over these seemingly random assortment of legacy media, provide a detailed preservation assessment of the condition of said materials, as well as digitize and provide access to the public a number of the photographs and audio records.

Mufaddal Chakera

Professional Experience Project

LeapOrbit LLC.

with: Sandeep Alapatt

Customer Identity and Access Management using SAML.

This project aims to research cost-effective Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) solutions for integrating external Identity providers with Leap Orbit's proprietary product and potentially replacing the existing commercial product. Collaboration with product managers, engineering, and data teams will inform the evaluation of existing solutions and development of an authentication solution per specification.Deliverables include a SAML-based solution design, working versions in Development and Test environments, a documented onboarding process for new customers, and integration tests against 3rd party IdP solutions. Evaluation criteria assess customer authentication, SAML request completeness, behavior consistency, customer onboarding ease, and adherence to organizational code quality policies.

Hingis Chang

Professional Experience Project

Gemini Crown Tech

with: Stephanie Harrison

Redesigning and Optimizing the User Experience of the Pre-production Project Management Collaboration Tool

Currently, the pre-production progress in the film-making industry needs to collaborate across different departments, and this causes a gap between every task and becomes a pain point to sync up and manage the project. Gemini Crown Tech has developed wrap-up software to enable users to efficiently manage the numerous activities involved in movie or television show production and content development, such as planning, budgeting, scheduling, script breakdown, etc. To optimize the user experience, I will help them with user research to get feedback and quantitative data that can improve the current user flow and design.

Huixiang Chen

Professional Experience Project

EN Smarttech

with: Jeremy Lee

EN SmartTech Mobile Homepage Design

The En SmartTech mobile website design project aimed to develop a visually appealing, user-friendly, and responsive website that effectively communicates the company's brand, services and offerings, meets the needs of the target audience and increases conversion rates. Heuristic Evaluation and A competitive analysis and User Researchwere conducted to inform the design. Due to limited resources, options were presented to the client for moving forward. The project prioritized user experience and conversion rates, while remaining flexible and responsive to the client's needs and constraints.

Sravan Reddy Chilumula

Professional Experience Project

University of Texas at Austin

with: Dr. Ying Ding

Explainable AI for Length of Stay prediction in a Critical Care Unit

Having the ability to predict a patient's length of stay (LOS) with accuracy during their visit to the intensive care unit (ICU) can be a valuable opportunity for enhancing hospital planning and efficient management of clinical resources. The goal of this project is to elucidate the decision-making process of the algorithm created by Tianjian Gao and Dr. Ying Ding, as well as to identify the most relevant patients and their associated risk scores, with a focus on the key factors contributing to their length of stay.

Sanika Chitnis

Professional Experience Project

University of Texas at Austin

with: Shibu Mathai

Designing the user experience to enhance car rental services while ensuring safety throughout the process.

I have always rented a car on vacation and its been a fun experience. But thats not the case for everyone. People rent cars for vacations, short trips, or on business trips. Yet they also rent in case of replacement rentals. In each case safety, security and accessibility are important throughout the users journey. Having access to immediate assistance in a new location is crucial.As part of my capstone project, I am working with a startup firm centered around car renting. I am developing two car rental mobile applications targeted at two key audiences: individual customers (B to C) and organizations (B to B). The primary goal of these applications is to make the rental process easy, stress-free, and safe for users. The importance of immediate assistance in the event of accidents or incidents is a key feature of the application.My tasks were to conduct primary research and synthesize the findings to help convert them into actionable flows. This also helped in laying out and identifying the information architecture of primary and secondary features in the minimum viable product. Hence I had to fulfill the roles of user researcher and designer. The aim was to create a scalable and user-friendly design system that enhances the overall user experience across both mobile applications.It was exciting to take on the challenge of creating a design system from scratch for both of these applications based on the insights of the research. I was able to combine my past knowledge and experience with the latest learnings and design principles to effectively deliver interactive prototypes. I was also able to create the design guidelines and mobile responsive templates for future use.

Wendy Chuang

Professional Experience Project

Rocket Central

with: Joe Lopata

Onboarding Portal - An Internal Web Tool Design for HRs at the Rocket Companies

The Onboarding Portal is an internal web tool that automates and centralizes the onboarding process for new hires, making it more efficient and enhancing their first impression of the organization. With the capacity to handle hundreds of new hires every month, it eliminates manual processes, reducing errors and miscommunications. The portal offers an intuitive experience for both hiring teams and new employees, streamlining the onboarding process and creating a positive user experience. Overall, the Onboarding Portal is a powerful tool that can help the organization improve its onboarding process and communication with new hires.

Brandy Clark

Professional Experience Project

Weiss High School

with: Kay Gooch

Social Talks: A One-Stop-Spot for Research

I aim to create a physical one-spot-stop for primary sources for students creating a research paper. My methods include creating a list of popular research papers topics and curating a shelf of non-fiction books. I will label them physically and digitally. For each section, I will generate a list of fiction books about the topic that can be accessed via a QR code on each shelf. This project will promote nonfiction works in my library and Ill be able to note how proximity and organization lend themselves to increase student check-out of the displayed materials. Kay Gooch

Amelia Costello

Professional Experience Project

UT Libraries

with: Joe Dobbs

Highlighting Diverse Collections: Furthering DEI Initiatives at UT Libraries

Highlighting Diverse Collections (HDC) is an Instagram series that originated in 2020 as a way to bring awareness to the depth and value of the over 10 million resources available at UT Libraries (UTL). All collections strive to reflect the diverse populations UTL serves and this series aims to spotlight several different communities each month and includes topics such as Autism Awareness, Muharram, Humanitarian Mapping and more. The goal behind pushing this series out through social media was to further broaden our audience and with the successful levels of engagement, it has now evolved into a regularly featured series on the UTL Instagram and Facebook page. This two part project involved working in collaboration with the Arts, Humanities & Global Studies Engagement Team (AHGS) to take on a project management role in the content creation process. The libguide is intended to serve as a bibliography style archive of published posts that will allow users to directly access materials from the posts in the UTL catalog. Ultimately, the goal was to establish a role and set of best practices that would allow a future student to take over working with the AHGS Team and continue facilitating the HDC series.

Shih-Chieh Dai

Professional Experience Project

The Pennsylvania State University

with: Aiping Xiong

Automating Response Evaluation: A tool for automatic coding responses to open-ended questions.

The goal of the project is to create a tool leveraging natural language processing (NLP) techniques to evaluate the responses to the open-ended questions. In common practice, researchers evaluate the responses by thematic coding. The process is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Further, in order to control the quality of the work, it relies on at least two experts to manually code the responses. With the development of NLP technology, I created a tool to make the machine as the coder. The key technologies of this project are NLP, aspect-extraction model, classification model, and transformer. With the help of the tool, the users can use this tool to generate a code book and customize it on top of that. Moreover, the application can code the responses. To evaluate the result, I implemented Cohens kappa to calculate the inner-annotator agreement.

Hannah Deaver

Library Practicum

Tom Green Elementary School

with: Kay Gooch

Creating a Culture of Literacy: Planning, Leading, Supporting, and Curating an Elementary Library Program to Support a Diverse School Community

As a full-time elementary librarian, my project involved utilizing my role and expertise to develop a campus culture of literacy plan to support the diverse needs of our school community. Tom Green Elementary has a library that serves a multilingual population of students, staff, and families. The purpose of this project was to develop literacy goals, ensure activities and events promoted effective literacy skills and strategies for students and families, and foster an overall love of reading. By serving as the leader of our campus literacy committee, I was able to implement my plan and set up a couple of events to support the goals of this plan. The first event was a literacy night that allowed me to collaborate with grade level teachers and our Parent Teacher Association to plan and run stations that reinforced various literacy skills. Another priority was that each station offered differentiated activities to meet the language and learning needs of all students and families who attended. The other event was a Read-a-thon fundraiser to promote reading at home while raising funds to purchase more diverse books for our collection. As a result of these events, we have been able to build and strengthen relationships with the diverse members of our school community and raise almost $4,000 to purchase more multilingual books to develop a library collection that is more equitable and meets the needs of our diverse learners.

Melissa Deuber

Professional Experience Project

Austin Community College

with: Keri Moczygemba

Enhancing Student-Centered Library Services: A Survey-based Approach to Software Selection at Austin Community College Libraries

Austin Community College serves over 70,000 students each year with over 100 programs of study and 11 campuses, each with their own library. ACC Libraries is attempting to improve their services by adding software programs to library computers. To aid in this effort, I created a survey for ACC students to gauge their interests in certain software. I then created a data visualization using Tableau to inform ACC Library staff about the most important findings of the survey. Through my project, I was able to include student insights into ACC Libraries decision-making process to make the Libraries more useful for students.

Denise Dicks

Thesis/Masters Report

Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Andrew Dillon

Beyond Utility: Accessibility, Art, and the Cultivation of Beauty

This masters report explored accessibility through the lens of artists and museums. The following tenets were foundational to the research: art is necessary to the health of people and communities; it is a social gauge to understand the past and present; all work done in accessibility and for the disabled community must be led by their own voices nothing about us without us. Through two rounds of interviews and a literature review spanning the fall and spring semesters, a surprising discrepancy was uncovered: the extensive accessibility work being done in museums was antithetical to artists perceptions of and experiences, who reported having no to little exposure to accessibility in their schooling and within exhibitions spaces.

Adeline Donnelly

Professional Experience Project

Commemoration and Contextualization Iniative

with: Celeste Henery, PhD

Implementing a Records Management Program for the Commemoration and Contextualization Initiative at UT Austin

The Commemoration and Contextualization Initiative (CCI) at the University of Texas at Austin seeks to commemorate, contextualize, and research the diverse communities that have contributed to the university as students, faculty, laborers, and Austinites. The goal of this project is to develop and implement a records management program for the CCI in UT Box. The CCI born-digital collection will be transferred to an archival repository at the conclusion of CCIs various projects. This records management program is unique in that it considers the needs of both the current users of the records (the CCI staff) as well as the future archive patrons. This project has included creating and implementing a filing structure and file naming conventions for the records currently on CCIs Box Drive as well as guidelines on following file naming conventions, email retention, file formatting standards, and other relevant records management procedures.

Kaitlyn Dougherty

Professional Experience Project

UT School of Information

with: Dr. King Davis, Sarah Norris

Cataloging and Preserving the Personal Files of Dr. William Francis Drewry

Dr. William Francis Drewry was the superintendent of the Central State Hospital in Petersberg, Virginia, from 1896 to 1924. He held many prominent positions on various committees and influenced psychiatric care during the turn of the century. Dr. Drewrys files have been in the possession of his familial descendants since his passing. I cataloged and preserved the hundreds of files and thousands of documents to aid in Dr. King Daviss ongoing research. Folders still intact were replaced as the paper had become acidic, and the labels had been lost to edge damage. By analyzing the organization of these folders, I recreated the file system for displaced files that had lost their folder completely. This will provide insight into Dr. Drewrys process and preserve his documents to allow safe handling for future research.

Diandra Douglis

Professional Experience Project

Dell Medical School

with: Imelda Vetter

A Quick Introduction to the Medical Publishing Field

Research and publishing are integral components of a life in academia. However, publishing can be difficult and confusing to navigate. This Capstone; A Quick Introduction to the Medical Publishing Field seeks to make this process easier for members of the Dell Medical Schools community. As an addition to the broader Medicine libguide, this section addresses topics like; how to find a journal to publish in, important publishing terminology, what is open access publishing, and how to assess the quality level of the publication. I do this by providing short and succinct explanations of useful topics, ideas, and tools, which I identified by reviewing existing resources and surveying both the Dell Medical School community and members of the Medical Library Association. By creating this libguide addition, I hope to increase understanding of the medical publishing process and open access publishing models in particular.

Hannah Dubbe

Professional Experience Project

The University of Texas at Austin Libraries

with: Michael Shensky

Custom Object Detection for GIS at UT-Libraries

My capstone project aims to see if there are machine learning solutions available for automating the creation of map annotations for The UT-Libraries Map Collection. Much of this project has been dedicated to appropriately preparing the image dataset for pre-existing ML object detection models in TensorFlow. This has involved creating Python scripts for prepping, sorting and converting the existing dataset into images and annotations that will work for an object detection ML environment. Some of the challenges have been related to resource limitations. These include disk space limits and Google Colab timing out before the model can finish its training.

Suyash Ekre

Professional Experience Project

Knowbility

with: Sharron Rush

Knowbility: Website Redesign

The capstone project's objective was to redesign Knowbilitys current website. The project's goal was to understand the complete purpose and objectives of the non-profit organization and give a complete makeover of the current website. I have multiple methods like user interviews with the organizations team and some users. I also conducted a Heuristic evaluation to understand the usability issues of the website. And to understand the users better, I conducted a Jobs to be done frame to create specific use cases to get information about what kinds of purposes different users have while using the website. This led to the creation of efficient and easy-to-use Information Architecture for the complete architecture. After reviewing the IA with the team, I will start working on the website design with multiple iterations and then conduct organized user testing with people with different abilities to recreate the website to make it more accessible.

Abigail Glasser

Professional Experience Project

Lake Travis Community Library

with: Morgan McMillian

The Loud Library: Developing and Growing Children’s Programming in a Post-COVID World

Between COVID closures and staffing issues, the last few years have brought challenges to the Lake Travis Community Library. The library has a strong older patron base due to its proximity to an assisted living facility, but staff was having trouble keeping the children and families engaged. Due to a staff that was already stretched thin, it was hard to find the time and energy to devote to supplemental programming supporting the younger crowd. My goal for this project was to work with staff to use new and existing resources to help bring these patrons back. For the duration of the semester, I reintroduced Saturday story times and implemented new Spring Break programming to bring some noise and fun back to the library.

Apoorva Gondimalla

Thesis/Masters Report

Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Min Kyung Lee

Informing summary design for human-in-the-loop decision-making through user-centered research

In case management, immense volumes of text bring maximum utility when they can be referenced easily and effectively for a purpose. A concise snapshot of the key information alleviates the effort and time needed to go through them. This research study aims to understand how to create useful value-inducing summaries of hundreds of written client notes to support case managers at the City of Austin for better decision-making. I leverage literature review, interviews, and co-design techniques to gain a deeper understanding of information needs in case management and provide design recommendations.

Abigail Gore

Professional Experience Project

Visa

with: Hillary Berquist

Usability Testing of an Online Checkout Experience

An online checkout experience built on the latest e-commerce industry specifications has been designed to provide an easy, smart and secure checkout process. This third party product is enabled by leading industry payment platform technology for merchants who have chosen to participate. This research is aimed at determining if there have been improvements of users' understanding of how their payment credentials are stored and how they may be used during future purchases, to gauge their feelings towards the level of security this product provides, and biometric preferences when accessing their account. Moderated usability testing was conducted with 8 participants, followed by unmoderated usability testing with 48 participants. With the design addition of more information during the onboarding process, participants were better able to understand that this product is a third party service and that their card information is not being stored directly with merchants. Overall participants expressed security concerns, and providing them with extra measures such as a One-Time Password (OTP) may help improve their overall experience. The addition of biometric authentication, such as Face ID, was generally viewed as secure. Participants had no preferences between two different enablement flows for the biometric authentication enrollment process.

Amy Griffin

Professional Experience Project

University of Hawaii

with: Hauʻolihiwahiwa Moniz

Archiving the International Indigenous Librarians’ Forum

In 1999, Indigenous information professionals from Aotearoa, Canada, Sweden, Australia, and America created the International Indigenous Librarians Forum. Ever since, the forum has met bi-annually and created opportunities for Indigenous information professionals to gather, share, and discuss projects related to protecting, preserving, and accessing indigenous resources, cultural materials, and other forms of ancestral knowledge. This project involved digitizing, organizing, and creating a LibGuide dedicated to over 20 years of indigenous conversation, and information practices. This resource is intended for forum attendees to build on the forums themes of indigenous sovereignty and self-determination over how information is collected, managed, and shared.

Ryn Grotelueschen

Professional Experience Project

University of Texas Libraries

with: Gina Bastone, Adriana Cásarez

Comics Collection: Research Guide for a UT Libraries’ Special Collection

This capstone project focused on working with UT Libraries to create a research guide (libguide) for their Comics and Graphic Novels collection. The aim of my project was to create a guide which can be used for casual reading and research discovery alike. The collection is robust but not the easiest thing to discover and browse at an academic library. I got to flex my research and design skills in this guide creation as well as honing my selection and assessment skills. It is my hope that the guide will aid anyone just getting into comics or comics research.

Amanda Guerrero

Professional Experience Project

ExxonMobil

with: Dorinne Hammons

Designing a Web-Based Calculator for Carbon Storage

A key factor in understanding potential carbon storage projects is the CO2 plume size in the subsurface. A screening-level tool, nicknamed "Back of the envelope calculator", provides a first-pass stable CO2 plume size under a wide range of reservoir and project conditions.The goal of this project is to transform the excel-based BoE calc into a web-based, cloud-enabled tool with improved visualization and sharing capabilities. This includes talking to engineers and stakeholders to gather requirements for the design, iterating on the design itself with the team, and doing usability testing/evaluation.

Charizma Gupta

Professional Experience Project

Appropriate Design

with: Lauren Serota

EcoLens: Empowering sustainable actions through a mixed reality application

EcoLens is a mixed-reality mobile application that provides real-time climate impact information to users. Through extensive desk and contextual user research, I developed a high-fidelity prototype to suggest sustainable alternatives and provide impact metrics for everyday actions like shopping, refueling, and grabbing a cup of coffee. EcoLens' intuitive interface empowers users to make informed decisions that benefit both themselves and the planet, fostering sustainable practices and driving a positive impact on climate change.

Jasmine Guy

Professional Experience Project

Harry Ransom Center

with: Amy Wagner

Investigating Statistics Keeping Systems & Practices to Improve Quality

The purpose of this project is to address problems and deficiencies in the methods for tracking reference statistics at the Harry Ransom Center. The project will provide an analysis of issues that the staff currently face, as well as potential solutions and systems that could be implemented. This will be achieved by surveying staff to discover problem areas to focus on, researching guidelines and practices used by other institutions, and investigating systems that could be implemented in the future. The final report will be able to be used as a guide to implement changes to improve the quality of reference statistics.

Addison Hollis Chastain

Professional Experience Project

Tarlton Law Library

with: Matt Steinke

Digitization Plan for the Tom C. Clark Papers at the Tarlton Law Library

The Tarlton Law Library is the home of the Tom C. Clark Papers. The papers include books, manuscripts, and photographs and are a comprehensive record of Justice Clarks activities as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice, public servant, and advocate for improved judicial administration. Researchers can use a detailed finding aid to the collection to locate specific boxes/folder numbers. Currently, digitization requests are available by fee only. This project aims to create a plan for digitization and public access of the most popular and requested case files.

Feng-I Hsieh

Professional Experience Project

Syndio Solutions Inc.

with: Lena Ripple

Implement customized labels in Syndio's product

The project essentially involved changing the way we label employee demographics:

Implement new APIs to enable customized labels.
Modify frontend React-hooks and code to enable the interface to updateaccordingly
Alternatives for labeling non-white when using that group in a comparison:
- BIPOC Black, Indigenous, People of Color)
- HUGs Historically Underrepresented Groups)
- POC People of Color)
- URGs Underrepresented Groups)
The outcome should allow users to change the above term within the Admin Center directly.

Kelly Hu

Professional Experience Project

Diaryz

with: Not Provided

Diaryz - support caregivers' manage mental health through diary entries

Diaryz is designed to supports caregivers in managing their mental health by diary writing, mood-tracking, and building global caregivers community. We realized this by building intuitive and engaging user interfaces through the creation of site maps, information architecture, and wireframes, and iterating existing features and interfaces based on user testing feedback and stakeholder interviews. As a result, we received 10+ user signups after the initial launch.

Chia-Yu Hu

Professional Experience Project

Not Provided

with: Not Provided

Enhancing the online rental car reservation experience on the business side

While there is a continuing demand for rental/loaner cars, effectively managing their operation is a primary focus. Dealerships aim to provide stable loaner cars to customers in order to maintain positive relationships, but they also rely on rental cars to increase revenue. To address these challenges, I plan to incorporate a "buffer" feature that will help dealerships avoid scheduling contracts too close together and make vehicle management more efficient. Through user interviews and second-hand information, I aim to design a solution with this buffer feature that will allow customers to manage their vehicles more.

Yen-Jen Huang

Professional Experience Project

UT Department of Computer Science

with: Paul Toprac

Local Misinformation Pipeline

The goal of this project is to produce a tool, Local Disinformation Pipelines, that surfaces misinformation circulating in local communities. The project will be executed through a partnership among interdisciplinary academics and news organizations, including the Communication School at UT Austin, the Information School at the University of Michigan, local newsroom Detroit Free Press, and more partners from California, Illinois, and Iowa. My role in the project is the only UI/UX designer on the team. Im in charge of defining user needs through qualitative user research and market research, establishing UX strategy, and designing every detail of the functionality, such as delivering the wireframe, design system, user interface and prototype.

Laura Huerta

Professional Experience Project

Dell Technologies

with: Amrita Maguire

Navigating the Ethics of AI: Strategies for Responsible Innovation

This qualitative research study explores the perceptions and experiences of IT professionals and decision-makers regarding the ethical development and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace. The project goes beyond the traditional approach of solely focusing on the technical aspects of AI and instead emphasizes the critical importance of ethical considerations in shaping the responsible and sustainable adoption of AI in the workplace. Through a literature review and in-depth interviews with stakeholders across seven different countries, the study identifies key principles, best practices, and challenges in the field of AI ethics. The research offers insights into how organizations can implement ethical AI practices, the challenges they face, and the impact of ethical AI on their work. With mounting concerns about the ethical implications of AI, this study is particularly relevant in the current discourse on AI ethics. The findings of the study contribute to the growing body of knowledge on ethical AI and have practical implications for organizations, policymakers, and researchers, offering valuable insights for decision-making, policy formulation, and future research in the field of AI ethics.

Ming-Hung Hung

Professional Experience Project

OJO

with: Kent Czechowski

Optimizing Website Conversion through Clustering Visitors: A Data Analysis Project with Movoto.com

The primary goal of this project is to optimize website conversion for Movoto.com by clustering visitors based on their browsing behavior. This will be achieved by collecting data from Google Analytics, selecting pertinent features, and utilizing machine learning algorithms to determine their significance in improving the user experience on the website. My responsibility is to leverage my expertise in Python, PySpark, and statistical knowledge to assist Movoto.com in distinguishing visitor behavior. To address the issue of imbalanced data, I will be conducting oversampling and undersampling of the sample data and evaluating the difference between training loss and test loss to avoid overfitting. Throughout the project, I encountered several challenges, such as understanding the meaning of some columns in the raw Google Analytics data and dealing with a substantial amount of data. Ultimately, the project will enable Movoto.com to effectively optimize website conversion by clustering visitors based on their browsing behavior.

Sarah James

Professional Experience Project

UT School of Information

with: Dr. R. David Lankes

Building the Center for Rural Communities & Librarianship

This is a multi-part project providing support for the creation of an academic center for rural librarianship. The Center for Rural Communities & Librarianship (CRCL) will be a network of thriving rural libraries partnered with top universities, state agencies, funders, associations, and innovative companies with the common goal of nurturing rural communities and improving rural life. CRCL seeks to coordinate and amplify the work of partners into a rural library movement for the common good. Work included participating in a team that conducted research and literature reviews around rural librarianship, community building, support for studies on the needs of rural librarians, and focused work on credentialing and alternative credentialing models.

Hira Jamshed

Professional Experience Project

Handshake

with: Liz Savage

Navigating the Job Market: A Side-by-Side Comparison of Handshake and Its Competitors

Handshake was created to ensure that all college students have equal access to meaningful careers. Within a few years, Handshake has become the system of record trusted by 90% of four-year universities and 300+ community colleges to connect career searching students with work. However, small and large recruiting platforms (competitors) are now entering and competing in the space. Hence, as a UX researcher, my challenge was to help them understand the early talent recruiting competitive landscape for their Employer and Student Business Units. My goal was to understand the brand positioning, product experience and value drivers, pricing and packaging, marketing tactics and channels, creative strategies, and content that competitors employ to position themselves in the marketplace and win business. My work consisted of launching investigative surveys to get large-scale sentiments from students on use/utility of platforms, sketching out journey maps to contrast user experiences, performing a comparative analysis with each platform to identify differences/similarities in functionalities/services, keeping my eyes and ears open during immersion exercises as a job seeker myself, and, finally, crunching through lots of data to bring forth strategic insights for Handshake.

Insiyah Juzer Jawadwala

Professional Experience Project

C2FO

with: Lauren Bock (Product Manager)

Improving the Supplier Support System on C2FO's Platform: Enhancing User Experience by Solving Payment Inquiries

This thesis project aimed to enhance the supplier experience on C2FO's platform by identifying the ideal support solution for users to ensure their needs were met at every stage of their journey. The project gathered insights to improve the product by helping suppliers (primary users) resolve their issues, build trust and long-lasting relationships with the company. The research question focused on determining the appropriate support mechanism to provide an outstanding experience for C2FO's users.Specifically, the project sought to identify how to offer help at the right moment, to the right user and how to help users access information better. To achieve the research objective, the project drew on knowledge from internal experts through 45-minute interviews, desk research on available information on the internet (including backed research and best practices), and a deep dive in internal documentation on the topic using Google Slides, Reports, Tool Dashboards, etc. The project analyzed the current supplier support system on C2FO's platform, including multiple channels where the company provided customer support, such as Supplier Relationship Manager Interactions, Marketing website FAQs, articles on help.c2fo.com, Intercom chats, and Supplier Support helpline. Initially, the investigation focused on the chatbot experience, but language localization issues were uncovered. Therefore, the project shifted its focus to solving the most asked question by suppliers, which was related to payment inquiries.With a potential transition to Salesforce for chat bot integration this investigation aimed to help ensure current issues with customer support can be accounted for as we transition to Salesforce completely. The outcome of the project was an improved supplier support system that provided a better experience for C2FO's users, resulting in increased trust and long-lasting relationships. The new support system also allowed for easier access to information, reduced response time, and increased customer satisfaction.

Shashwat Jyotishi

Professional Experience Project

Molina Healthcare

with: Ankur Gupta

Liver Cirrhosis Prediction using Machine Learning

This study presents a liver cirrhosis prediction project utilizing machine learning algorithms in healthcare to enhance diagnosis and treatment. A model based on XGBoost was developed, achieving a prediction accuracy of 79.87%. The model identified critical features for predicting cirrhosis and can support medical professionals in early identification and intervention. Future research can focus on expanding the dataset, incorporating genetic and lifestyle factors, and integrating the model into clinical settings as an additional diagnostic tool. This work underscores the potential of machine learning in healthcare for improving patient outcomes.

Hari Priya Kandasamy

Thesis/Masters Report

Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Ying Ding and Dr. Abhijit Mishra

Comparative Analysis of Deep Learning Models for Chest X-ray Classification and Interpretability using Explainable AI Techniques

Medical Image analysis is a crucial aspect of modern healthcare, and deep learning models have shown promising results in this area. However, the interpretability of these models remains a challenge, particularly for complex medical images such as chest X-rays. In this project, we evaluate the performance of three state-of-the-art deep learning models, Inceptionv4, Vision Transformers, and ResNet50, for the classification of chest X-ray images using two datasets, NIH-CXR-LT and MIMIC-CXR-LT. Our findings show the comparison of these models with AUC scores on the chest X-ray datasets, with Vision Transformers having a better AUC score and reduced training time. Furthermore, we demonstrate the interpretability of the models using explainable AI techniques. This project has the potential to improve the accuracy and interpretability of deep learning models for medical image analysis, which could have significant implications for the future of healthcare.

Ruchika Kankaria

Professional Experience Project

Nokia

with: Rob Furlano

Designing a new product dashboard for 5G application development and monetization.

With 5G networks expanding, monetizing network assets is critical for telecom companies and enterprises. In this project, I designed a user-friendly dashboard for Nokia's Network Monetization Platform to help app developers and organizations efficiently manage their APIs and monetize 5G assets. Through extensive research, I gained an understanding of user and business requirements, then utilized design techniques and design system to create wireframes and prototypes. Peer reviews and multiple iterations optimized user flow, ensuring seamless navigation. The result is a dashboard enabling users to manage organizations, projects, and members, providing the best possible experience for 5G application creation and monetization.

Supreeya Karn

Professional Experience Project

University of Texas Libraries

with: Melody Ethley

Improving the findability of information on the UT library website from a UX lens.

The project focuses on improving the findability of the global navigation menu on the UT library website. My research aims to understand howpeople are expected to find information on the UT library webpage. I focus on conducting user research to provide better global and local navigation design solutions. The goal is to understand how website visitors categorize and prioritize information so that the navigation and organization of the UTL website can be improved. I aim to construct an information architecture that facilitates self-intuitive and navigable information. Additionally, I am testing the landing page to optimize the findability of content n the library website and improve user experience.I am working in collaboration with the UX CFT which is a cross-functional team of library staff members from various departments of UTL. The user research methodology used for this project is hybrid-Card sorting. The software used for it is Optimal Workshop software. The study is unmoderated where the participants will be asked to sort the existing global navigation menu and sub-menu items into categories they want based on their intuition or the categories they are provided with. I will evaluate the usability and user experience of the UTL website by analyzing the results of the card-sorting study and providing a recommendation for making changes to our website navigation and organization based on the study findings.My research revealed that UTL's current navigation menu arrangement is not entirely understandable to students. It appears that students have been trying to sort the subitems of the global menu based on similarity with familiar words when navigating the website. Therefore, the global menu hierarchy needs to be more self-intuitive. This would require redesigning the navigation menu and conducting further analysis.

Manasvini Karthikeyan

Professional Experience Project

Renzoe Box

with: Rene Graham

Smart Makeup Recommendation System using Machine Learning

The purpose of this project is to model a makeup routine recommendation system, using reviews and user inputs on skin type and product preferences. Using web scraping to extract product data based on the routines used by makeup influencers on social media platforms, the recommendation system will take user inputs to recommend the optimal set of products required. The skillset used for this project includes Python, SQL, and Tableau. The goal of this project is to reduce waste generated by owning redundant products, and only owning what is required. The future scope includes facial recognition and instant matching with influencers, enabling a quicker user experience.

Avni Kering

Professional Experience Project

Ecliptic Capital

with: Mike Millard

Researching Topics for Research Reports: Survey Design and Analysis for a Venture Capital

Ecliptic Capital (EC) is a venture capital firm, that makes a case for capturing, developing, and scaling a range of emergent technologies from talented entrepreneurs from often neglected geographies and industries. Aligning with their focus on operational excellence, building rich relationships, and transparency to create value, trust, and insights over time, they want to publish research reports on various topics their ecosystem might be interested in. The purpose of this capstone project was to support the team to: (1) Identify and document the various topics stakeholders are interested in; (2) Compare and evaluate the relevance (to ECs work focus) and priority of these topics; (3) Compile an analysis report of the survey and provide them with a list of topics for research reports. Insights were gained from analyzing raw data of a survey, shared with Ecliptics ecosystem.

David Kerr

Professional Experience Project

Concord

with: Elina Rubuliak

Defining the User Research Process

As of January 2023, members of Concords product team conducted user testing ad hoc; team members frequently built plans from scratch, and insights from tests were not captured systematically. Concords CEO wished to address these issues while maintaining testing focus on the companys customer base.Research was conducted on both internal and external usability practices. Afterwards, recommendations were developed, evaluated, refined during two rounds of testing with Concord customers.The result is a user research process which emphasizes the partnership between the product and customer service teams, and which leverages existing resources for minimal disruption to current employees.

Rachel Kim

Professional Experience Project

UT School of Information

with: Dr. Yan Zhang

Designing a Platform for Personal Health Tracking: Insights from Longitudinal Health Information-Seeking Experience

The purpose of this project is to design and create a prototype of an intuitive and accessible platform that can assist individuals in tracking and storing their personal health information. We first extensively analyzed various primary data, such as diaries and interviews regarding longitudinal health information-seeking behavior, providing insights into user behavior and preferences around health information. One of the insights from the analysis revealed that some individuals tend to search and try home remedies or preventative treatments before seeking medical attention. Additionally, I conducted a series of competitive analyses to identify gaps in current symptom tracking and health diary applications. Leveraging these insights, the project aims to create a mobile application that enables individuals to experiment with various self-care practices, build everyday habits, and track the effects of their changes over time. The goal of the app is to empower individuals to take control of their health and achieve better health outcomes.

Gyeongmo Kim

Thesis/Masters Report

Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Ying Ding

Remote Work: How It Came to Be, Its Current Status and What It May Look Like

Since the rise of COVID-19 in 2020, workers in numerous fields and industry had to make a major transition to remote work to minimize commuting and thus spread of the infection. As the new normalcy set in, new phenomenon and workplace conflicts emerged. But remote work is no novel way of working, as it emerged as a legitimate mode of labor during the early days of Industrial Revolution, with the modern concept of remote work being proposed decades before the Internet was widely available to the public. This Masters Report is a literature review that outlines the context of remote work, its current position in office work cultures with emphasis on the transition to remote work in 2020, and its potential future direction in what kind of position remote work would have in terms of work organization and work practice. Outside of academic journals, a variety of sources such as historical accounts, law review and investigative news reports have been considered to paint a better picture of the significance of remote work.

Andrea Ko

Professional Experience Project

Not Provided

with: Not Provided

Designing a user-centric information hub for the Perinatal Psychiatry Access Network (PeriPAN) program

The PeriPAN program is a state-funded hotline for clinician-to-clinician consultation for providers (e.g. OBGYNs) serving pregnant and newly postpartum women who are experiencing mental health distress, operating in conjunction with the Department of Psychiatry at Dell Medical School. The program was conceptualized in Fall 2022, and being relatively new, does not have an existing home website. This project thus establishes a website for the program. The website will primarily contain factual and objective media and text resources including perinatal mental health information divided into different subcategories discussing common mental health disorders in pregnant & newly postpartum women. The website will also discuss the PeriPAN program itself in detail, including information such as who it serves and instructions on how to use it. Through in-depth communication with stakeholders as well as iterations on its initial wireframes, my goal is for the website to as a one-stop information hub for patients and providers we serve in search of information related to mental health in pregnant and newly postpartum women, in addition to hosting information about and generally raising awareness about the PeriPAN program as well as its parent organization, the Texas Psychiatry Access Network (TPAN) and the programs it offers.

Elizaveta Kravchenko

Thesis/Masters Report

Faculty Advisor:
Dr. Kenneth Fleischmann

The Ethics of Care and Participatory Design: A Situated Exploration

This thesis provides suggestions to an early stage start-up regarding integration of ethical perspectives throughout the design process. By critically considering core tenets of feminist care ethics and participatory design, the project establishes a foundation of synergies and methodological overlaps between the ethical theory and design process. This understanding is then utilized to propose a framework emphasizing contextual relationality between project stakeholders for integration within a design. The framework is applied to identify opportunities for support within the prototyping of Camp Cura, an AI-powered mobile application aimed to help young adults self manage asthma symptoms. Through shadowing the initial design teams work, areas of particular caution within the design are identified. The thesis culminates in tailored identifications of opportunities for ethical framework integration and areas for project improvement.

Sweta Krishnamurthi Shankar

Professional Experience Project

Indeed

with: Mr. Adam Hagerman

Enhancing Candidate Data Ingestion: A Study to Improve the Hiring Process for SMBs

This project aims to identify pain points and redundant tasks in candidate data ingestion for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and propose a solution that can be integrated into Indeed's platform to streamline the hiring process. The project uses exploratory interviews, user journey mapping and value proposition design to understand the needs and requirements of SMBs, followed by design and concept testing to propose and test a digital solution with representative users. The outcome of this research is a report that provides a comprehensive understanding of the challenges in the hiring process for SMBs and a prototype of the solution that can be used to streamline candidate data ingestion for SMBs, making the hiring process more efficient and effective.

Saahari Kumar

Professional Experience Project

Sentier Strategic Resources, LLC

with: Christina Enriquez

A User-Centered Case Study and Redesign for Olea Edge Analytics' Meter Health Database

This project focuses on creating a case study and redesigning the UX/UI of Olea Edge Analytics' meter health database, which utilizes AI sensor-based technology to monitor water usage, and to create a case study highlighting the importance of user-centered design principles in creating an efficient and user-friendly meter health database. Tasks involved in the project include uncovering user needs, creating a design system, conducting a competitive analysis, creating accessible visuals, and collaborating on content copy. The project's outcomes include a case study, redesigned screens, and a scalable design system that provides a consistent visual language throughout the case study. The project's success is attributed to its user-centric approach and collaboration among team members.

Lisa Lesniak

Professional Experience Project

Liberty Hill Public Library District

with: Angela Palmer

StoryWalks and Surveys: Engaging the Community in Planning for a New Library in Liberty Hill

For this project, I partnered with Liberty Hill Public Library to plan and execute a series of traveling StoryWalk events within the Liberty Hill Public Library District. The community which LHPLD serves is growing exponentially and to meet its needs, Liberty Hill is building a larger library. In order to gauge the community preferences for a new building, I developed a mixed-method survey which was available online, in paper format, and also advertised on social media. While StoryWalks boost literacy and physical activity, an underlying purpose of holding a series of traveling events was to distribute the survey to the broadest possible audience. In addition to engaging the community in the planning of a new library, the StoryWalks also functioned to promote the current resources that LHPLD has to offer. The gathered data will be used to inform the librarys new strategic plan and make recommendations for future programming and amenities.

Calvin Leung

Professional Experience Project

Dell Technologies

with: Fleming Seay, Beth Sarno, Eric Graham

New UX Hire Onboarding at Dell Technologies

The purpose of this project is to understand thoughts, pain points, and gaps with new UX hire onboarding at Dell Technologies Experience Design Group (EDG). During my capstone, I surveyed and interviewed UX managers, new UX hires (new grad), and new UX hires (experienced). Surveys were created in Qualtrics and Interviews were hosted in Zoom. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded. Insights on resource sharing methods, existing technical resources, and video resource ideas will be shared with the Dell EDG team following the Capstone presentation.

Han-Hsuan Lin

Professional Experience Project

School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin

with: Dr. Soo Young Rieh

SearchIdea: An Idea Generation Tool to Support Creativity in Academic Search

Users searching for information in academic contexts often need to compare different perspectives, organize search results, and synthesize topics. To support peoples creative thinking processes while searching for academic information, we developed SearchIdea, a Web-based online tool, that enables users to actively interact with search results beyond evaluation and selection. Through its three primary featuresSearch Results, SearchMapper, and IdeaMapperSearchIdea allows users to add saved search results to SearchMapper for comparison, prioritization, and rearrangement. Using IdeaMapper, users can elicit keywords from search results, brainstorm, and organize ideas while identifying relationships among ideas.

Julissa Lira

Professional Experience Project

Elgin Public Library

with: Paula Waak

Developing an Outreach Program for Teens in the Elgin Community: Teen Night Friday

Elgin Public Library had seen a decrease in teen patrons ever since the pandemic, therefore the main purpose of this capstone project was to increase teen patrons by 10-15%. The goals of this capstone project were to increase teen library users, promote library services and programs to teens, provide tools and resources to possibly create new events for teen patrons, and promote life-long learning to teens. To meet these goals, a needs assessment was created for teens in the community to take so that the library can better understand the participants and their needs. The needs assessment contained questions about the participants age, education level, library usage, gender, interests, and programs they would like to see at the library. In addition, the participants were asked to give the library feedback/suggestions and to express challenges they had been facing in the community. The goal was to have 100 participants take the needs assessment. Outreach and collaboration were conducted with local businesses and with the dual credit teens at the Austin Community College Elgin campus to promote the librarys needs assessment. In three weeks, 115 participants had taken the needs assessment. Using the needs assessment results, a potential program for teens was created. The results showed that the three most popular interests that teens have are music, video games, and life skills. The top 3 most voted programs that teens wanted to see at the library are life skills, video games, and DIY. Using these results, Teen Night Friday was created and in this program, teens will get to make their own pizza, play games around the library (video games and board games) and listen to music.

Laura Manzanarez Ramos

Professional Experience Project

Slalom Consulting

with: Andi Bell

Improving internal non-profit user platform to increase workflow and community

As a UX designer for a non-profit organization, I played a crucial role in enhancing their internal employee portal. I conducted extensive user interviews and utilized the findings to develop user personas and journeys. Based on these insights, I designed wireframes and final UI designs that aimed to optimize user workflows and provide a centralized location for data and document storage. The end result was a user-friendly and efficient portal that streamlined the organization's operations and improved their overall productivity.

Samuel Marsh

Professional Experience Project

Texas State University Libraries

with: Stephanie Towery

Developing Fair Use and Copyright Educational Material at Texas State University

The purpose of this project is to generate new educational content on copyright and fair use for the Texas State Community. With the goal being to provide students and staff with new ways to engage with the material, the project's main deliverables are an online learning module hosted on Canvas and a live presentation that will be recorded as a webinar. In terms of long term impact, professors will be able to insert the learning module into their online Canvas courses, and the webinar will be available for view.

April Martin

Professional Experience Project

Perry–Castañeda Library

with: Brittany Centeno

Inventory, Rehousing, and Relocation of the Sharir and Sharir/Bustamante Dance Collection

The Sharir and Sharir/Bustamante Dance Collection contains a diverse range of materials, including papers, posters, photographs, slides, news articles, and e-textile costumes, all of which pertain to the performances and dance events organized by former UT dance faculty member, Dr. Yacov Sharir. Though the collection was originally accessioned in 2017, processing never met completion. This project entailed three key tasks to ensure its preservation: inventorying the materials, rehousing the collection, and transferring the collection to a secure storage facility. Through my efforts, an accurate finding aid has been created for Texas ScholarWorks, while also being stored in a manner that ensures its preservation at the UT Collections Deposit Library.

John Martinez

Professional Experience Project

ThoroughCare

with: Maryanne Miller

Modernizing the ThoroughCare Dashboard, Creating a design system, and re-envisioning personas.

The purpose of this project is to help modernize the design of ThoroughCares main dashboard. The main deliverables of this project are: A redesigned ThoroughCare dashboard, with an updated font system, buttons, as well as colors, including a night mode to act as a high contrast mode. This also includes a redesign of certain screens to help optimize the user experience. A style guide is also included, acting as directions and a guide for future designers of ThoroughCare, so that they can utilize the company colors, correct fonts, and modern buttons. The personas that ThoroughCare has currently are updated, have been given a face lift, and are made to be in line with personas of modern UX practices. I have utilized user testing, usability and accessibility testing, and design thinking to help improve ThoroughCares dashboard to be more usable and visually stable.

Dorian McIntush

Professional Experience Project

Texas A&M University Libraries

with: Krista Oldham

An Analysis of the Cushing Memorial Library and Archive’s Collection Management Software

The Cushing Memorial Library and Archives is the rare books, special collections, manuscripts, and archival repository for Texas A&M University. Currently, Cushing uses the collection management software AtoM to curate their collections and administrate the public facing collection viewing page. The Cushing faculty are not satisfied with the performance of AtoM and would like to switch to a different collection management software. This project will assess the ways in which AtoM does not successfully meet Cushings needs using a survey of two different teams in the librarys faculty: the collection development team and the public facing team. The project will also use the results of this survey to evaluate alternate collection software and make a formal recommendation as to which of these alternatives would best suit Cushings needs.

Miraj Mehta

Professional Experience Project

Indian Institute of Technology

with: Sasidharan V

Designing and Improving UX for an online learning platform

Over the past 3.5 months, I worked with Indian Institute of Technology Madras to design and improve one online learning portal. Core requirements for this project were to improve the navigation and integrate more features and data improving the learning experience of students. With each design sprint, I focused on requirements, validated the need and approach, presented concepts and upon getting a green flag, produced and handed off high fidelity prototypes to developers.

Rachele Merliss

Professional Experience Project

Out Youth

with: Ryan Dillon

Cataloging the Out Youth Jerry Strickland Jr. Memorial Library

The goal of this project is to make it easier for users of the Jerry Strickland Jr. Memorial Library, run by Out Youth, to find materials. With the second-largest collection of LGBTQIA+ literature in Texas, the Library needs a detailed, clean, user-friendly catalog and additional discovery tools. This project aims to ensure that those who wish to utilize the library can do so, with a particular focus on the organization's many youth members.As part of this work, I used Out Youth's existing catalog in LibraryThing to sort books into collections, tagged books with additional information, and created guides to different genres within the library. In some cases, I combined overlapping collections or created new ones, re-naming and organizing collections according to their contents. I also combed through collections to find books that had been misfiled and categorized them correctly.I researched each book using Kirkus Reviews and other sources to ensure accurate sorting and tagging. I made several guides about different materials available in the library using Canva. I kept track of my work with Google Sheets, and kept Out Youth apprised of my activities with work organization platform Asana.The outcomes of this project are:

A newly created Youth Nonfiction collection with 64 books, all tagged.
Cleaner and more intuitive collections.
470 total works tagged.

My hope is that future data collected by Out Youth Library will show increased library usage as a result of books being easier to find.

Divya Raju Mirchandani

Professional Experience Project

University of Texas at Austin

with: John Robert Bautista

A Usability Study on MediLinker

MediLinker is a blockchain-based healthcare identity management system developed by Dell Medical and the iSchool for consumers and organizations.The usability study enabled the team to understand the users ability to trust, adopt and employ the mobile application, thus identifying areas of improvement. Research Objectives -Uncovering usability issues in the process and user interface.Identifying opportunities for increased user-centric focus.Learning about user behavior and preferences.

Sydney Muster

Professional Experience Project

Teachers Retirement System of Texas

with: Robert O'Connor

Proposal for long-term digital storage of records involving the construction and move of the Teachers Retirement System of Texas

The objective of this project is to develop storage options for operational and archival records associated with the move of the Teachers Retirement System of Texas (TRS). TRS is currently constructing a new headquarters in the Mueller district that the agency will move into by the end of 2024. Currently, documents involving the project are stored with different workgroups. As a government agency, TRS records are subject to the Texas Public Information Act and may be requested by the public, so it is imperative that documentation is gathered and stored for the retention period in compliance with state law. The project entailed a comprehensive evaluation of records involved with the Alpha Bravo project and understanding the needs of the various workgroups. Once information was gathered, I redesigned the current SharePoint project hub to better suit the project. The changes included additional sites for workgroups, new libraries, and additional metadata for retrieval. Robert O'Connor

Dustin Najera

Professional Experience Project

University of Texas at Austin

with: Monica Munoz Martinez

Designing for Educators: A UX Research Study for understanding public school teacher needs and meeting them

Dr. Monica Muoz Martinez is a public historian in the Department of History at UT-Austin with a project to build a website that will be public facing in the next couple of years. This website will support the instruction of public-school teachers teaching history. My study uses User Experience Research methods to uncover the pain points experienced by middle and high school level educators with a similar website to the one being built by Dr. Martinez and her team. The pain points uncovered in this study will be transmitted to Dr. Martinez and her team via a heuristic evaluation, a competitive analysis, and a user testing report. The insights uncovered in this study will provide guidance on how to build an intuitive and accessible website that will serve the needs of public-school teachers.

Andres Navarro

Professional Experience Project

Dell Medical School

with: Marissa Burgermaster, PhD

Nutri Project

The Nutri suite aims to make it easier for healthcare providers and patients to create alignment on nutritional goals. Another iSchool student and I are working on two prototypes: NutriYum and ReNutri.NutriYum seeks to help patients explore resources that might be tailored to their goals. ReNutri is the UI for patients following up on a previous goal with their healthcare provider. Our methods are using an iterative design process based on feedback from our stakeholders and the outcome will be two new prototypes that could be later submitted for research grants proposals

Madeline Nezat

Professional Experience Project

Thinkery: Austin's Children's Museum

with:

Revamping Underutilized Exhibit Spaces at Thinkery: Austin’s Children's Museum

Thinkery is Austins STEAM-based educational childrens museum that encourages learning through creative play with various temporary and permanent exhibit halls and makers spaces dedicated to physics, art, nutrition, health, light, sound, and more. My goal as a capstone student through my professional experience project was to revamp a permanent exhibit piece through experimentation, training, and designing new signage. I conducted a small series of experiments to answer specific questions and hypotheses about the types of materials that would work best with the table and the strengths and weaknesses of the older technology already part of the permanent exhibit. I then incorporated these successful materials into a training day with floor staff. They would be encouraged to include the new materials in their daily facilitated activities as fits into their regular job requirements. Signage explaining the infrared and computer programming techniques to the guests in an age-appropriate manner was also drafted to accompany the table.

Thai-duong Nguyen

Professional Experience Project

JSX

with: Not Provided

UX Research, Design and Management: How The Integration of All Three Methods Are Required For a Successful Product

I was hired onto JSX as the UX design manager. I acted as the lead designer, researcher and project owner. My goal is to practice everything I learned in MSIS and apply them to the current digital products to create revenue generating products and systems. I was successful as I redesigned the booking flow, guided the redesign process for the mobile app, enhanced existing components and worked closely with the commercial team to rapidly bring new ideas to life. During each project I learned that the academic lessons regarding research and design were important but so was project management.

Ruoxuan Pan

Professional Experience Project

EchoKids, Inc.

with: Shizuno Furuya

Redesign overall user experience of EchoKids digital platform

The goal of this capstone project is to enhance the user experience of EchoKids, a curated education platform that connects young musicians with families and schools for lessons, by designing a responsive website. The project involves redesigning the user experience to make the platform more engaging and dynamic. The project will entail designing responsive mockups for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices, creating user flows and information architecture analysis, and initiating end-user research. The deliverables include a responsive website for EchoKids, user research data and metrics analysis, and user flows based on research data. Evaluation criteria for the project include usability, accessibility, efficiency, learnability, user engagement, flexibility, aesthetics, satisfaction, and business goals. Completion of the project will improve the platform's functionality and provide valuable professional experience.

Brenda Panella

Library Practicum

Wells Branch Elementary Arts Integration Academy

with: Kay Gooch, Amy Palermo

Empowering Readers: Nurturing Young Minds in the Elementary School Library

This capstone project focuses on enhancing a public school library by streamlining literary materials organization, inventory management, and delivering engaging science and social studies lessons. The goal is to boost student involvement through diverse educational resources and opportunities. The project entails conducting a comprehensive inventory, pinpointing areas for improvement, and adopting new organizational strategies. Furthermore, it involves devising and executing lesson plans in line with science and social studies curricula. Ultimately, the project aims to augment the library's effectiveness and accessibility, benefiting both students and educators.

Ashwini Paradkar

Professional Experience Project

Dell Technologies

with: Fleming Seay

Designing a conversational AI for systems management at Dell Technologies

With Chat GPT and other competitive AI on the rise, there is a an increasing number of opportunity areas for efficiency, proactiveness, and personalisation. My capstone project involved examining and designing these opportunity areas within systems management for Dells Infrastructure Solutions Group. Specifically with the question in mind- how can we leverage conversation AI to help manage systems better, smartly, and more proactively?For this project, I started by firstly understanding how IT specialists and users interact with Dells enterprise product, iDRAC. I then listed down questions and assumptions I had about designing a potential conversation AI for products like that by drawing out a risk/certainty matrix while also prioritising which areas my product will be focusing on. After this, I conducted 4 interviews with SMEs at Dell who are working within infrastructure and have studied AI extensively. This gave me a chance to narrow down my focus more on the capabilities of my product and what value it would bring to the table. Additionally, by carefully studying the current AIs in the market, I also listed down pain points and opportunities that I could integrate into my product. After gathering this information, I created a happy path and user journey for what some ideal interactions between the users and AI would look like. Using all this research as a base for my product, I drew out some initial sketches and conducted brainstorming activities with my manager and teammate. This was the basis on which I create my hi-fidelity functional prototype that conceptualised four different user flows. I then conducted a few rounds of usability testing with IT specialists from different companies who would be the target users for my product and got their feedback. This led me to incorporating all the feedback and creating my final product.

Soojin Park

Professional Experience Project

University of Texas at Austin School Unions: UT Alienware Esports Lounge

with: Carla Criner

Alienware E-sports Lounge: building a user-friendly website through design thinking approach

UT Austin has recently opened the first public esports lounge at the Union in late Fall 2022 through a partnership with Alienware. The lounge is open to anyone with a valid UT ID, but only a few people know about the existence of the lounge due to the lack of a streamlined platform for information distribution. This project focuses on building that bridge to improve awareness and engagement levels by establishing a website that serves midway points for users to interact with the lounge. The website implements findings and features from the results of UX methodologies such as user surveys, guerilla testing, competitive analysis, user persona, and wireframing, ensuring a positive user-centered experience. Users can now obtain lounge-related necessary information virtually and utilize the lounge more confidently and happily.

Boyeon Park

Professional Experience Project

Dell Medical School

with: Mbemba Jabbi

Predicting Suicide Risk using Machine Learning Techniques

This project aims to predict suicide risk using machine learning techniques on post-mortem data that includes both clinical and demographic information. The process consists of the following steps: Data Pre-processing, Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA), Feature Extraction, Feature Importance Analysis, Model Training, Model Improvement, and Model Performance Analysis. In the Feature Extraction phase, 497 features were extracted from the text data, reducing the number of features from 28,000 to 497 without any loss of information. The Feature Importance Analysis was conducted to identify the most crucial features for the classification task. Logistic Regression, Decision Tree, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, and Deep Learning models were applied and compared.

Karthikeya Pinnelli

Professional Experience Project

School of Information

with: Keisha Brown

Developing a better content management strategy for the iSchool website

This project aimed to understand the content management practices of various teams responsible for the content published on the iSchool website. Another objective was to examine the timelines for collecting, editing, and publishing information. The research employed secondary research, site mapping, mind mapping, and stakeholder interviews to identify the pain points and expectations of the stakeholders. The finding revealed areas for improvement, leading to the development of a comprehensive content management and documentation strategy. This strategy includes guidelines for best practices to help unify the timelines across all the teams to maintain a regular update schedule for the iSchool website.

Rachel Poppen

Professional Experience Project

UT School of Information

with: Dr. R. David Lankes

My Poster Visit My Portfolio

Empowering Rural Librarians: Librarian Credentialing through The Center for Rural Communities & Librarianship

Rural libraries and librarians provide vital services to their communities - from internet access to telehealth and supporting early literacy and they are well-positioned to impact their communitys wellbeing. However, these libraries face many challenges, such as decades of disinvestment and budget cuts, lack of training, and limited resources. In addition, many rural librarians do not have a formal education in librarianship and may feel unqualified to meet the current challenges. Credentialing provides an opportunity to empower librarians through the recognition of their skills and provide them with a sense of legitimacy. As a part of this project, I have researched issues regarding rural librarianship, met with leaders in librarian credentialing, helped develop a proposal for the Collaborative Institute for Rural Communities & Librarianship, and interviewed librarians about their opinions on credentialing.

Talia Potochny

Professional Experience Project

Favor Delivery

with: Lauren Hamilton

Houston Runner Market Discovery Research

While every market has unique challenges and opportunities, Favors Houston Runners exhibit strange behaviors. To uncover motivations behind these behaviors, Favors UX Research team tasked me with creating a research plan to learn more about this market segment. I met with internal stakeholders, gathered company-collected data on Houston Runners, and interviewed and surveyed people working in this market. I discovered that the weird behaviors we were seeing from our runners were a result of a new feature locking neighborhoods that have too many drivers which created a more frustrating user experience for runners who were unable to easily deliver orders.

Redoan Rahman

Professional Experience Project

The University of Texas at Austin

with: Dr. Unmil Karadkar

Articulating Data Quality for Effective Space Situational Data Reuse

Space situational awareness (SSA) is critical for maintaining the safety and security of space operations. The ASTRIA initiative combines data from various near-Earth space observatories to understand the scale of space objects and enhance SSA. However, the quality of the received data can significantly impact the reliability and efficiency of SSA and the comprehension of near-Earth space observatories. In this research, we develop a framework to analyze the quality of the received data from various sources, define performance metrics to measure the quality of the received data, and determine the overlap of observed objects between the involved sources.

Gayathri Ramesh

Professional Experience Project

Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, UT Austin

with: Dr. Stephanie Cawthon

Navigating online accessibility in learning environments and evaluating the usability of the Ally Accessibility Platform on UT Canvas

The aim of this project is to primarily understand faculty perspectives and experience with the Ally platform on Canvas. The Ally platform automatically checks whether course materials are accessible. It offers step-by-step guidance to help faculty enhance the accessibility of their content and enables students to download alternative formats like tagged PDFs, OCRed PDFs, electronic Braille, and audio. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of how faculty members interact with this platform, research methods using surveys, interviews, and focus groups were conducted. The goal was to identify any issues or concerns and provide suggestions to support the university's implementation and rollout of this platform.

Tara Rastogi

Professional Experience Project

DiNitto Career Center

with: Jennifer Luna

Steer Your Career: Streamlining the Appointment Scheduling Process

Steer Your Career (Steer) is the platform that social work students at UTs Steve Hicks School of Social Work (SHSSW) rely on for all things career advising. Steer serves students and alumni at all stages of job market exploration, but folks frequently struggle to schedule appointments within the system. Recognizing how critical these appointments are to a social workers success, I aimed to gather insights into how to make the site more user-centered. I conducted a heuristic evaluation and competitive analysis to identify gaps and areas of opportunity, in addition to conducting eight student interviews. After synthesizing the results and developing recommendations, I presented the findings to the SHSSW Academic Affairs team.

Andrew Reiter

Professional Experience Project

Texas Digital Library

with: Courtney Mumma

Incorporating and Visualizing Google Analytics 4 Data in the Texas Data Repository

The Texas Data Repository (TDR) is the research data management system for Texas Digital Library (TDL) member institutions. By incorporating Google Analytics 4 into the TDR, member institutions and TDL staff can gain important insights into user behavior and patterns. Through a combination of research and stakeholder input, this project created user reports related to engagement rate, path through the site, session source, event count, user location, browser statistics, session medium and various other metrics. This project developed a dashboard visualizing various Google Analytics metrics in Looker Studio, which is a data visualization tool created by Google. TDR stakeholders can use this dashboard to better visualize and understand the websites data. In addition, I created useful handbooks on how to use Google Analytics 4 and Looker Studio in the context of the TDR so that future stakeholders can build on the work and research incorporated into this project.

Lisa Richardson

Library Practicum

Odom Elementary School Austin ISD

with: Kay Gooch

Trilateral Makerspace Implementation Strategies: A Study of Three Methodologies

This project looks at three differing methodologies of implementing Makerspace activities in an elementary school setting. The first- participation with a mobile Makerspace Cart on a sign up basis with students in participating classes having weekly access. Materials and activities available through the library are either specifically coordinated and planned with and for teachers to support learning objectives, or are available to classes as open ended exploration after they have checked out their library books.These methodologies were continuously evaluated throughout project implementation with feedback from teachers, students, and through working closely with campus leadership to ensure successful and progressive implementation strategies. The campus did not have any makerspace programming or materials prior to the commencement of this academic year, and this project has had an immense and immediate school-wide impact through this three-pronged approach.

Tyler Roberge

Professional Experience Project

Texas State Library and Archives Commission

with: Maria Freed

Promoting Texas Workforce Development Resources with TSLAC through Libraries and Partner Organizations.

This project with the Library Development and Networking Division of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission was a two-part initiative: to gather data through interviews and research and then create a central hub to host this information for public accessibility to make more visible workforce resources to libraries, partner organizations, and the public on TSLAC's website. Over the course of the project, I conducted interviews with community leaders from different libraries in Texas and the Texas Workforce Commission, helped collect and organize information on events and resources from organizations within the state, and designed the blueprints and policies for running, updating, and retaining the upcoming webpage to be built and hosted by TSLAC's agency. In conducting this project, TSLAC and I hope to spread awareness of the library's role in workforce development, connect community members (entrepreneurs, youths looking for jobs, and beyond) with their local libraries for assistance, and highlight resources, leaders, and organizations that can help through TSLAC's webpage.

Sheldon Salo

Professional Experience Project

Center for Transportation Research Library

with: Michael Nugent

Connecting Undergraduate Students to Transportation Research: A Comprehensive Outreach Initiative

The aim of this project was to promote the Center for Transportation Research Library's collection through a variety of means, with the end goal of enhancing access and awareness of its resources among undergraduate students. The project involved several initiatives, including the creation of information literacy videos and assignments, the update of promotional materials, and the development and delivery of presentations to student groups and classes. These efforts were tailored toward students and designed to focus on electronic materials, which are increasingly important for research and readily available through the librarys catalog. This project served as a comprehensive outreach initiative, providing multiple avenues for students to access and engage with the transportation research library's collection.

Mayur Salunke

Professional Experience Project

Dell Technologies

with: Prof. Fleming Seay

Improving Waiting Time Experiences using Progress Indicators in Dell Infrastructure Solutions Group

The goal of this project was to improve waiting time experiences across all products in Dell Infrastructure Solutions using progress indicators. To achieve this, a thorough research was conducted on the importance of loading time and the use of different progress indicators. Several design systems were studied, and Dell employees were consulted to understand all use cases. Three types of components were created: spinners, progress bars, and skeleton loading, with best practices, usage guidelines, and anatomy. Workflows were created, and accessibility criteria were checked to ensure successful implementation by developers. Overall, this project aimed to enhance user experience by reducing frustration and improving efficiency while waiting for product loading times.

Dishanth Shankar Reddy

Professional Experience Project

Burgermaster Lab

with: Madalyn Rosenthal

The Nutri Project

Nutri is a nutrition assistance tool for primary care doctors to help patients improve their nutrition and diet through collaborative goal setting. My work in this project, along with another iSchool student, as part of the UX team, is to design NutriYum and further the designs and development for ReNutri. NutriYum is a phone application aimed at providing our patients with the resources and knowledge based on their personal needs and status to help them fulfill their nutrition goals. It acts like an extension of the main Nutri tool. ReNutrie is the next step in the design of Nutri in that we are designing what the application and the interactions look like after the patient comes back to the clinic after working on their goal. Eventually, ReNutri will become part of the main Nutri tool. For this project, my teammate and I have conducted stakeholder interviews, and competitive analysis, designed low-fidelity to high-fidelity wireframes/screens, and finally created mockups for the designs. The scope of the project did not allow for any research and testing but we utilized the research and testing work done in the previous round of the Nutri study.

Dhrumik Sharma

Professional Experience Project

Balbix Inc.

with: Logan George

Streamlining Cybersecurity: Redesigning Balbix's Desktop Product for Mobile Users

In this capstone project, I aimed to simplify Balbix Inc.'s complex web product for mobile users. By conducting user research and collaborating with the customer satisfaction team, we identified essential features for the mobile app. We developed a design system, optimized user flows, and tested hi-fi designs with users. The result is a streamlined and intuitive mobile app that provides necessary cybersecurity features for users on the go.

Zhiyue Shi

Professional Experience Project

UT School of Design and Creative Technologies

with: Kate Catterall

Drawing the Ring of Steel: Mobile Application Conceptualization and Design

The Ring of Steel project originated from a 2019 workshop that explored the memory and meaning of Belfast City Centre. The workshop aimed to address the remembrance of the Troubles era in Belfast and methods for collectively marking the conflict's legacy. Among the participants, the process of entering the Ring of Steel, a security cordon that encircled the city center during the period, was particularly noteworthy. We launched this project for younger generations and people with no experience with the Ring of Steel, who live far away from the past and find it challenging to understand the context and appreciate the journey that has been made. We aim to use multiple approaches to explore the traces of the barricades still visible and the intangible legacy of the security cordon's impact on our collective history. These methods include providing accessible and comprehensive digital information to those unfamiliar with Belfast and the Northern Ireland conflict, incorporating user-centered design methodologies to engage more people in the history of Belfast through a high-fidelity interactive mobile application prototype, and using digital archival strategies to manage, preserve, and present records.

Anna Shulpina

Professional Experience Project

Technology & Information Policy Institute

with: Dr. Keri Stephens

Preparing for Disasters: Designing a Resource for Small Business Owners

This past semester, I worked with researchers from UT Austins Technology & Information Policy Institute (TIPI) to learn the types of disasters small business owners face in Austin and determine what resources could be designed to help their small business better prepare. With the help from TIPI, I looked at previous data collected on this subject matter, conducted outreach to various small businesses in Austin, and interviewed a total of 13 small business owners using an iterative approach. The outcomes of this study include specific findings and insights from the interviews, a design of a resource for small business owners (tips from small business owner to small business owner), and recommendations for future work done in this subject area. This project, funded by IC2, will serve as a foundation for additional work happening this summer working with small businesses in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.

Nikhil Singh

Professional Experience Project

CDK Global

with: Santosh Daryani

Observability and Monitoring for Distributed Microservices

The project's key objective is to research and implement an observability and monitoring solution for key API micro services deployed as part of CDK Globals data services. These set of tools and dashboards aim to bring the live performance of the APIs to a user and alert them of critical issues and performance metrics in a rapid manner. This ensures a high uptime of the services, easy and convenient debugging of the issues, and quick access to metrics of the services.

Rishabh Soni

Professional Experience Project

Dell Technologies

with: Fleming Seay

Enhancing Global Search and Results experience for Dell Infrastructure Solutions

The Dell Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) is a team dedicated to creating infrastructure-based solutions. In this project, I had the opportunity to work on a project aimed at improving the search experience across all products under this area of focus. To accomplish this, I followed a series of steps. Firstly, to gain an understanding of the current search scenarios I began by studying and analyzing three Dell products. I also conducted interviews with UX designers and researchers to gain insight into any problems encountered with the current use cases. Next, I analyzed components from the two existing internal design systems to identify opportunity areas for enhancing the user experience. I also researched seven external design systems to learn about what other companies were working on and read research articles to identify best practices. After gathering all these insights, I developed several iterations and conducted 6 usability tests with users to evaluate their mental models and refine my design. Finally, I presented my design proposal to internal stakeholders for buy-in and later in a larger meeting with Dell's Experience Design Group. At the end of the project, I delivered design components for the new global search and results experience, usage rules, and user journey mappings. I also provided documentation for design and development standards to ensure seamless integration of the improved search experience across all products in the Dell ISG product area.

Mia Spencer

Professional Experience Project

Handshake

with: Liz Savage

UX Research: A study of early career recruiters

Handshake is an online recruiting and employment platform for college students and alumni. Handshakes partnerships with universities and employers help simplify the recruiting process and make it more efficient. The participants for this project were early career recruiters who are internal employees for the companies they hire for. The goal of this project was to gain insight into where these early career recruiters spend their minutes, what tools they use and their opinions of them, and what they like and dislike about their jobs. I conducted interviews with early career recruiters and asked a number of questions, including questions about ten different recruiting processes. I then analyzed the data, summarized the findings, and presented everything, along with recommendations for further research.

Yuting Su

Professional Experience Project

Orchid Group LLC

with: Lilly C Teng

Creating a Delightful Digital Experience Website for Cosmetic Brand

This project is about implementing the concept of design thinking into the digital commerce experience and developing an affordable maintenance online shopping website for an entrepreneur. Determined by the Korean entrepreneurs unique cultural background and limited sources, this project will be finished with the most suitable tool. Reducing the optimizing cost and increasing the customer experience is the evolution of online and digital experience. Gaining the client's trust was also challenging, but my team persevered and gained the client's confidence in the project. Following the brand's and business goals, this project adopts Shopify and its customize programing language, the Liquid, to build its e-commerce website.

Swapnil Sudhir

Professional Experience Project

Quantified

with: John De Oliveira

Developing a Sales Simulator: An AI-Powered Sales Training Solution

The purpose of this project is to develop an AI-powered sales training solution, the Quantified Sales Simulator, that helps sales representatives improve their conversation skills and overall performance through realistic role-playing simulations that provide instant feedback and coaching. Using advanced AI algorithms and natural language processing, we are building a simulator for sales that prepares reps to go live with the help of AI and immersive simulations. Our team has collaborated with our client, Novartis, to define necessary features and functionality, built an AI replica of Novartis' customer base, developed immersive simulations, and integrated with popular video conferencing platforms. The project aims to deliver a fully functional Quantified Sales Simulator, detailed reports and analytics, and gamification and certification features to drive adoption and help managers ensure their team is ready to perform and win. The success of the project will be evaluated based on the effectiveness of the simulator in improving sales reps' skills and performance, the engagement and motivation of sales reps, the specificity of feedback, the usefulness of analytics for managers and leaders, and the impact of gamification and certification features.

Flynn Tan

Professional Experience Project

GuideWell/Florida Blue

with: Vanessa Carswell and Moses Adedoyin

Improving the Commercial Customer’s End-to-End Getting Medications Experience Through Human-Centered Research & Design

GuideWell/Florida Blue is undergoing a strategy refresh on the overall customer end-to-end experience. Part of the initiative is focused on improving the commercial customers end-to-end getting medications experience to improve member retention and customer experience KPIs. As a Lead Human-centered Designer, I initiate market research; lead subject matter expert discussions; synthesize research; create interview discussion themes and objectives; and present findings and recommendations to stakeholders. I also plan to lead qualitative interview sessions and set up co-design sessions with customers. My work will provide the Customer Experience team with guiding customer-centered insights for the next phase of the project.

Carl Teegerstrom

Professional Experience Project

Concordia University Texas

with: Agatha Torku

Libguides for Instructing Concordia University Texas’s New and Incoming Students on Library Services and Information Literacy

Concordia University Texass Library needs different methods to instruct new andincoming students on information literacy as well as the services made available by the library.To this end libguides were created to instruct those students on the variety of services, databases,and journals available at the library in addition to a libguide instructing students on informationliteracy. Concordia University Texass Library already had several libguides, but many were notpublished, outdated, or incomplete. This project was able to recycle many existingmaterials to create polished, organized guides in the appropriate visual style, which will assist ininstructing the new students and provide valuable information on how to effectively use libraryresources for research.

Kennedy Thurmond

Professional Experience Project

Auto Hot Box and Texas Home Movies

with: Christine Wu

Photo and Video Archival and Visualization Creation for Auto Hot Box

I digitized and created a visualization archive to make information accessible to clients regarding photographs, film negatives and video/audio materials for Auto Hot Box which is partnered with Texas Home Movies. Currently, 2,000 photos and 115 videos are only available on VHS tapes or stuck on an old WD cloud or in old folders. This project will determine a consistent means of cataloging the materials and will provide access to this metadata via a visualization. Enabling access to the metadata will allow access to viewing of the materials and use of this collection for, teaching and other personal uses by the clients requesting these materials. Digitizing these materials is an important outcome for Auto Hot Box.

Samantha Tuapen

Professional Experience Project

Dell Technologies

with: Fleming Seay

Topology Map - Data Visualization Research, Strategy, and Exploration

As an enterprise application, Dell's Unstructured Data Storage products ECS and ObjectScale work with large data sets that are often shown in tables for quick sorting and filtering. As trends and users evolve, there are opportunities to use data visualizations/topology maps to quickly help the user visualize, navigate, understand, and troubleshoot problems throughout their data systems and networks. Via research and cross-product analysis of current data visualization efforts within Dell products, analyzing competitive experiences, and conducting interviews with both internal stakeholders and end users, I will deliver recommendations on how we should evolve in this area to stay aligned and ahead of the competition by providing a better, more interactive visualization for our customers. These insights can be applied as a common experience component to other products within Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group in order to increase user engagement through improved data visualizations and consistency across Dell products.

Raja Vijaya Sankar

Professional Experience Project

School of Design and Creative Technologies

with: Prof. Neal Daugherty

VR Therapy: Building a Virtual World for Mental Health Treatment

This project aims to design and evaluate a virtual reality-based experience for aiding mental health treatment, developed by following a user-centered approach. The goal is to explore the potential applications of virtual reality environments in mental health and provide personalized mental health education to help manage patients' mental well-being. A comprehensive literature review was conducted to understand mental health education, user experience design, and virtual reality application development. User interviews and surveys were also conducted to identify pain points and specific needs that a VR experience can address for users. Using Unity, Figma, and Cinema4D, a virtual environment was designed and developed to mimic real-life situations, enabling users to practice coping mechanisms and develop skills in a safe and controlled environment. The outcomes of the project will provide insights into evaluating the effectiveness of a virtual environment as a tool for mental health applications.

Ashray Vinod Kumar Joshi

Professional Experience Project

Extreme Networks Inc

with: Jason Hiebl

Designing a new subscription-based portfolio for the services unit in the Networking Industry

The project is part of Extreme Networks PLM Services unit. The main objective of this project is to create a good, better, best subscription serviceportfolio in the niche networking industry similar to the subscription services provided by SaaS companies. In this project, my role made me gain anunderstanding of the current offerings and tasks required to launch a new product portfolio, which includes developing business cases, talking totop-level stakeholders, and doing customer and competitive research. The result was a report that shows a collaborative analysis ofdirect, indirect, and niche competitors' offers and pricing analysis while showcasing customer expectations from customer research for such anoffering.

Yiwei Wang

Professional Experience Project

Legacy Health

with: Yungsheng Chang

Creating a Service Blueprint for the Appointment Scheduling Process in Hospital

Knowing that some patients are experiencing difficulties during the appointment scheduling process, we want to improve this process by understanding what is going on behind the scene - the workflow between the internal stakeholders that is used to support the customer journey. . By conducting interviews with stakeholders, we not only illustrated their everyday work, the pain points in their work and communication gap between stakeholders, but also what the ideal state would be from the internal stakeholders perspective. We extracted the information from the interview scripts and created the blueprints separately, and then compiled them into one chart. We classified the pain points into several groups and identified the main root causes for the problems that the customers encounter during the scheduling process.

Victoria Wayland

Professional Experience Project

Austin Zine Friends

with: Jennifer Hecker

Color Printing for the Austin Zine Community

The non-profit Austin Zine Friends puts on the annual Lone Star Zine Fest which connects zine creators with zine fans. For this project, I have been working with Austin Zine Friends to investigate color printing options for people in Austin who are making zines. Part of zine culture is creating copies of the original to disseminate into the world. The step of how to print your zine is often left off of resources and can be hard to navigate. My capstone work is aimed to demystify that step, make zine printing more accessible, and encourage sharing of information and resources among zine makers and zine lovers in the Austin community. Through research and conversations, I have learned about existing printing resources in Austin, explored alternative ways of printing, and considered potential partners with space to house a community printing operation.

Naomi Wilkin

Professional Experience Project

SailPoint Technologies

with: Tina Timmerman

Making Meaning from Mess: Preparing Professional Services for Migration

SailPoint Technologies, a company that develops identity security management products, is migrating from Box to SharePoint. The Professional Services team is an integral part of product delivery and upkeep for SailPoint customers and is quickly growing. Poorly planned migrations in the past negatively affected Professional Services file organization. For this migration to SharePoint, intentionality is imperative to ensure files maintain a structure that enables discoverability for all team members. The preparation process involved identifying the teams information needs, cleaning up files, and crafting an informed organization that supports sustainable file maintenance and logical information retrieval overtime.

Di Wu

Professional Experience Project

the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin

with: Professor Soo Young Rieh

SearchIdea - an idea creation online system

My project is centered around building a website or a tool to help users think creatively. Creative thinking has always been considered as a critical skill for scholars and professionals. It is always difficult for people to generate new ideas based on existing resources. Searchidea has been created to help users generate new ideas based on their collected search results. Users can search whatever they would like to know and save them. And they are able to put their saved search results onto a drawing whiteboard, which may help them reorganize and generate new ideas.

Vanny Yeh

Professional Experience Project

UT Austin, School of Design & Creative Technologies

with: Kate Catterall

Revamping The Ring of Steel Website

"Drawing the Ring of Steel" is a 16-hour live engagement event scheduled for March 24th, 2022, aimed at facilitating public recollection of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The event will evoke memories of one of the few mutual experiences of the conflict - the security cordon that once encircled Belfast City center, protecting and rendering an entire population suspects. The militarized built environment, designed to meet security imperatives during the Troubles, can still be observed on the streets of Belfast today. This project aims to use a website as a medium for people to remember history and share their stories. Through this initiative, we hope to remind people of the impact of past conflicts and inspire collective efforts toward creating a better world.The project has been migrated from Squarespace to Wordpress, with custom programming for enhanced user experience and performance optimization. The administrator portal is easy to navigate, and updating the latest information is a breeze through the custom Wordpress website, which also provides storage for files.

Bo Zhang

Professional Experience Project

itisOVERDUE

with: Maxwell Suwaki

Improving the accessibility of itisOVERDUE’s public website

itisOVERDUE is a community-based organization that aims to promote cleaner, greener, and more welcoming neighborhoods by picking up trash together. However, their public website may present accessibility challenges for individuals with and without disabilities. To address this issue, my project focuses on improving the website's accessibility to enable everyone to contribute to society and the environment easily. Using the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, I conducted an evaluation of the current website's accessibility. To make the evaluation report more user-friendly for developers and designers, I utilized Figma to create an interactive report. Based on the insights from the evaluation, I developed a more accessible design system for the itisOVERDUE website, taking inspiration from Google's Material Design and Apple's Human Interface Guidelines. The final deliverables of my project are an interactive accessibility evaluation report and an accessible design system that enhances the usability and inclusivity of the itisOVERDUE website.

Jiaqi Zhou

Professional Experience Project

Lifo

with: Himo Liu

Redesigning the User Experience of Lifo Creator Hub for Content Creators

In recent years, the use of influencer marketing has become increasingly popular among brands looking to connect with their target audience in a more authentic and relatable way. Lifo Creator Hub is a platform that helps content creators monetize their social influence by building their own brand store and selling personalized products. This capstone project focuses on improving the usability and user experience of Lifo Creator Hub through user-centered design and iterative testing. The redesign will help to create an easy-to-use and effective experience for first-time onboard users.

Parker Zimmerman

Professional Experience Project

New Jersey State Library

with: Jennifer Nelson