| Student | Poster | Portfolio | Project Title | Project Sponsor | Abstract | Year | Capstone Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divya Agarwal | Poster | Developing a User-Centered Entrepreneurship Mentorship Platform | Entrepreneurship Minor, McCombs School of Business | This project focuses on the development of a mentorship program launched by the McCombs School of Business Entrepreneurship Minor Department. The aim of the program is to foster professional relationships between the UT Austin undergraduate Entrepreneurship minor students and seasoned professionals. The program addresses the various needs of students who come to UT at different stages of their professional and business journeys. Through the program they can connect with experienced professionals who can guide them in starting and growing their businesses. During the course of the project, I used UX methodologies to design an effective platform that streamlines the onboarding experience for mentors and helps students efficiently find and schedule appointments with professionals. The goal is to create a seamless and user-centered mentorship program that enhances professional development for students and professionals alike. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sanjana Ajit Kumar | Poster | Reducing public information requests through improved website usability: A UX case study of IRRIS at the UT Austin | Institutional Reporting, Research and Information Systems | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Erin Anderson | Poster | Positively Impacting Patient Care through Curated Medical Resources for Healthcare Providers | Ascension St. Vincent Evansville Medical Library | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Neal Baker | Poster | Tailoring Methods for Description and Access in Digital Audiovisual Collections | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sneha Balakrishnan | Poster | Portfolio | Designing an Interpretable ICU Length of Stay Prediction Dashboard using eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) | The University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Rachel Barnett | Poster | Organization, Migration, and Digitization of the McNay Art Museums Photography Materials | McNay Art Museum | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Emma Bekele | Poster | Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at a Rural Texas Public Library | Pottsboro 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Vasupradha Bhat Belman | Poster | Portfolio | Time-based policies - Identity and Access Management (IAM) | IBM | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Taniya Bhosale | Poster | Portfolio | Accessibility of heatmaps used in John Deere machinery - Looking for ways to enhance the accessibility of heatmaps for people with color blindness | John Deere | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Raghu Bommana | Poster | Improvements in Space Situational Awareness through Better Data Integration | UT Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ashley Bower | Poster | Preserving Public Memory: Designing A Digitization and Preservation Plan for the Travis County Archives Commissioners Court Recordings | Travis County Archives | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Rosalind Bradshaw | Poster | Processing Texas Library Association Records for TSLAC | Texas State Library and Archives Commission | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Katlyn Brinkley | Poster | Creating a how-to guide for UX professionals to implement industry standard processes within healthcare DevOps teams | Baptist Health System Jacksonville | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Frank Bross | Poster | Legacy Media Preservation Assessment and Digitization Project at the LBJ School | LBJ School of Public Affairs | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Mufaddal Chakera | Poster | Customer Identity and Access Management using SAML. | LeapOrbit LLC. | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hingis Chang | Poster | Redesigning and Optimizing the User Experience of the Pre-production Project Management Collaboration Tool | Gemini Crown Tech | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Huixiang Chen | Poster | EN SmartTech Mobile Homepage Design | EN Smarttech | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sravan Reddy Chilumula | Poster | Explainable AI for Length of Stay prediction in a Critical Care Unit | University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sanika Chitnis | Poster | Portfolio | Designing the user experience to enhance car rental services while ensuring safety throughout the process. | University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Wendy Chuang | Poster | Portfolio | Onboarding Portal - An Internal Web Tool Design for HRs at the Rocket Companies | Rocket Central | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Brandy Clark | Poster | Social Talks: A One-Stop-Spot for Research | Weiss High School | 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 | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Amelia Costello | Poster | Highlighting Diverse Collections: Furthering DEI Initiatives at UT Libraries | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shih-Chieh Dai | Poster | Automating Response Evaluation: A tool for automatic coding responses to open-ended questions. | The Pennsylvania State University | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hannah Deaver | Poster | Creating a Culture of Literacy: Planning, Leading, Supporting, and Curating an Elementary Library Program to Support a Diverse School Community | Tom Green Elementary School | 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. | Spring 2023 | School Library Practicum | |
| Melissa Deuber | Poster | Portfolio | Enhancing Student-Centered Library Services: A Survey-based Approach to Software Selection at Austin Community College Libraries | Austin Community College | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Denise Dicks | Poster | Beyond Utility: Accessibility, Art, and the Cultivation of Beauty | UT School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Adeline Donnelly | Poster | Implementing a Records Management Program for the Commemoration and Contextualization Initiative at UT Austin | Commemoration and Contextualization Iniative | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kaitlyn Dougherty | Poster | Cataloging and Preserving the Personal Files of Dr. William Francis Drewry | UT School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Diandra Douglis | Poster | A Quick Introduction to the Medical Publishing Field | Dell Medical School | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hannah Dubbe | Poster | Custom Object Detection for GIS at UT-Libraries | The University of Texas at Austin 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Suyash Ekre | Poster | Portfolio | Knowbility: Website Redesign | Knowbility | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Abigail Glasser | Poster | The Loud Library: Developing and Growing Childrens Programming in a Post-COVID World | Lake Travis Community Library | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Apoorva Gondimalla | Poster | Portfolio | Informing summary design for human-in-the-loop decision-making through user-centered research | UT School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Abigail Gore | Poster | Usability Testing of an Online Checkout Experience | Visa | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Amy Griffin | Poster | Archiving the International Indigenous Librarians Forum | University of Hawaii | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ryn Grotelueschen | Poster | Comics Collection: Research Guide for a UT Libraries Special Collection | University of Texas Libraries | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Amanda Guerrero | Poster | Designing a Web-Based Calculator for Carbon Storage | ExxonMobil | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Charizma Gupta | Poster | Portfolio | EcoLens: Empowering sustainable actions through a mixed reality application | Appropriate Design | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jasmine Guy | Poster | Investigating Statistics Keeping Systems & Practices to Improve Quality | Harry Ransom Center | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Addison Hollis Chastain | Poster | Digitization Plan for the Tom C. Clark Papers at the Tarlton Law Library | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Feng-I Hsieh | Poster | Implement customized labels in Syndio's product | Syndio Solutions Inc. | The project essentially involved changing the way we label employee demographics:
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Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kelly Hu | Poster | Diaryz - support caregivers' manage mental health through diary entries | Diaryz | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chia-Yu Hu | Poster | Enhancing the online rental car reservation experience on the business side | Not Provided | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yen-Jen Huang | Poster | Portfolio | Local Misinformation Pipeline | UT Department of Computer Science | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Laura Huerta | Poster | Portfolio | Navigating the Ethics of AI: Strategies for Responsible Innovation | Dell Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Ming-Hung Hung | Poster | Optimizing Website Conversion through Clustering Visitors: A Data Analysis Project with Movoto.com | OJO | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sarah James | Poster | Building the Center for Rural Communities & Librarianship | UT School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hira Jamshed | Poster | Portfolio | Navigating the Job Market: A Side-by-Side Comparison of Handshake and Its Competitors | Handshake | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Insiyah Juzer Jawadwala | Poster | Portfolio | Improving the Supplier Support System on C2FO's Platform: Enhancing User Experience by Solving Payment Inquiries | C2FO | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Shashwat Jyotishi | Poster | Liver Cirrhosis Prediction using Machine Learning | Molina Healthcare | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hari Priya Kandasamy | Poster | Comparative Analysis of Deep Learning Models for Chest X-ray Classification and Interpretability using Explainable AI Techniques | UT School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Ruchika Kankaria | Poster | Portfolio | Designing a new product dashboard for 5G application development and monetization. | Nokia | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Supreeya Karn | Poster | Portfolio | Improving the findability of information on the UT library website from a UX lens. | University of Texas Libraries | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Manasvini Karthikeyan | Poster | Smart Makeup Recommendation System using Machine Learning | Renzoe Box | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Avni Kering | Poster | Researching Topics for Research Reports: Survey Design and Analysis for a Venture Capital | Ecliptic 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| David Kerr | Poster | Portfolio | Defining the User Research Process | Concord | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Rachel Kim | Poster | Designing a Platform for Personal Health Tracking: Insights from Longitudinal HealthInformation-Seeking Experience | UT School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Gyeongmo Kim | Poster | Portfolio | Remote Work: How It Came to Be, Its Current Status and What It May Look Like | University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Andrea Ko | Poster | Portfolio | Designing a user-centric information hub for the Perinatal Psychiatry Access Network (PeriPAN) program | Not Provided | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Elizaveta Kravchenko | Poster | Portfolio | The Ethics of Care and Participatory Design: A Situated Exploration | School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Sweta Krishnamurthi Shankar | Poster | Enhancing Candidate Data Ingestion: A Study to Improve the Hiring Process for SMBs | Indeed | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Saahari Kumar | Poster | Portfolio | A User-Centered Case Study and Redesign for Olea Edge Analytics' Meter Health Database | Sentier Strategic Resources, LLC | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Lisa Lesniak | Poster | StoryWalks and Surveys: Engaging the Community in Planning for a New Library in Liberty Hill | Liberty Hill Public Library District | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Calvin Leung | Poster | Portfolio | New UX Hire Onboarding at Dell Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Han-Hsuan Lin | Poster | SearchIdea: An Idea Generation Tool to Support Creativity in Academic Search | School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Julissa Lira | Poster | Developing an Outreach Program for Teens in the Elgin Community: Teen Night Friday | Elgin Public Library | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Laura Manzanarez Ramos | Poster | Portfolio | Improving internal non-profit user platform to increase workflow and community | Slalom Consulting | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Samuel Marsh | Poster | Developing Fair Use and Copyright Educational Material at Texas State University | Texas State University Libraries | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| April Martin | Poster | Inventory, Rehousing, and Relocation of the Sharir and Sharir/Bustamante Dance Collection | Perry–Castañeda Library | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| John Martinez | Poster | Portfolio | Modernizing the ThoroughCare Dashboard, Creating a design system, and re-envisioning personas. | ThoroughCare | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Dorian McIntush | Poster | Portfolio | An Analysis of the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives Collection Management Software | Texas A&M University Libraries | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Miraj Mehta | Poster | Portfolio | Designing and Improving UX for an online learning platform | Indian Institute of Technology | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Rachele Merliss | Poster | Cataloging the Out Youth Jerry Strickland Jr. Memorial Library | Out Youth | 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:
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Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Divya Raju Mirchandani | Poster | A Usability Study on MediLinker | University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sydney Muster | Poster | Proposal for long-term digital storage of records involving the construction and move of the Teachers Retirement System of Texas | 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 | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Dustin Najera | Poster | Designing for Educators: A UX Research Study for understanding public school teacher needs and meeting them | University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Andres Navarro | Poster | Portfolio | Nutri Project | Dell Medical School | 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 | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Madeline Nezat | Poster | Revamping Underutilized Exhibit Spaces at Thinkery: Austins Children's Museum | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Thai-duong Nguyen | Poster | UX Research, Design and Management: How The Integration of All Three Methods Are Required For a Successful Product | JSX | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ruoxuan Pan | Poster | Portfolio | Redesign overall user experience of EchoKids digital platform | EchoKids, Inc. | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Brenda Panella | Poster | Empowering Readers: Nurturing Young Minds in the Elementary School Library | Wells Branch Elementary Arts Integration Academy | 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. | Spring 2023 | School Library Practicum | |
| Ashwini Paradkar | Poster | Designing a conversational AI for systems management at Dell Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Soojin Park | Poster | Portfolio | Alienware E-sports Lounge: building a user-friendly website through design thinking approach | University of Texas at Austin School Unions: UT Alienware Esports Lounge | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Boyeon Park | Poster | Predicting Suicide Risk using Machine Learning Techniques | Dell Medical School | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Karthikeya Pinnelli | Poster | Developing a better content management strategy for the iSchool website | School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Rachel Poppen | Poster | Portfolio | Empowering Rural Librarians: Librarian Credentialing through The Center for Rural Communities & Librarianship | UT School of Information | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Talia Potochny | Poster | Portfolio | Houston Runner Market Discovery Research | Favor Delivery | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Redoan Rahman | Poster | Articulating Data Quality for Effective Space Situational Data Reuse | The University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Gayathri Ramesh | Poster | Portfolio | Navigating online accessibility in learning environments and evaluating the usability of the Ally Accessibility Platform on UT Canvas | Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, UT Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Tara Rastogi | Poster | Portfolio | Steer Your Career: Streamlining the Appointment Scheduling Process | DiNitto Career Center | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Andrew Reiter | Poster | Incorporating and Visualizing Google Analytics 4 Data in the Texas Data Repository | Texas Digital Library | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Lisa Richardson | Poster | Trilateral Makerspace Implementation Strategies: A Study of Three Methodologies | Odom Elementary School Austin ISD | 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. | Spring 2023 | School Library Practicum | |
| Tyler Roberge | Poster | Promoting Texas Workforce Development Resources with TSLAC through Libraries and Partner Organizations. | Texas State Library and Archives Commission | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sheldon Salo | Poster | Connecting Undergraduate Students to Transportation Research: A Comprehensive Outreach Initiative | Center for Transportation Research Library | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Mayur Salunke | Poster | Portfolio | Improving Waiting Time Experiences using Progress Indicators in Dell Infrastructure Solutions Group | Dell Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Dishanth Shankar Reddy | Poster | Portfolio | The Nutri Project | Burgermaster Lab | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Dhrumik Sharma | Poster | Streamlining Cybersecurity: Redesigning Balbix's Desktop Product for Mobile Users | Balbix Inc. | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Zhiyue Shi | Poster | Portfolio | Drawing the Ring of Steel: Mobile Application Conceptualization and Design | UT School of Design and Creative Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Anna Shulpina | Poster | Portfolio | Preparing for Disasters: Designing a Resource for Small Business Owners | Technology & Information Policy Institute | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Nikhil Singh | Poster | Observability and Monitoring for Distributed Microservices | CDK Global | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Rishabh Soni | Poster | Portfolio | Enhancing Global Search and Results experience for Dell Infrastructure Solutions | Dell Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Mia Spencer | Poster | UX Research: A study of early career recruiters | Handshake | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yuting Su | Poster | Creating a Delightful Digital Experience Website for Cosmetic Brand | Orchid Group LLC | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Swapnil Sudhir | Poster | Portfolio | Developing a Sales Simulator: An AI-Powered Sales Training Solution | Quantified | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Flynn Tan | Poster | Portfolio | Improving the Commercial Customers End-to-End Getting Medications Experience Through Human-Centered Research & Design | GuideWell/Florida Blue | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Carl Teegerstrom | Poster | Libguides for Instructing Concordia University Texass New and Incoming Students onLibrary Services and Information Literacy | Concordia University Texas | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kennedy Thurmond | Poster | Photo and Video Archival and Visualization Creation for Auto Hot Box | Auto Hot Box and Texas Home Movies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Samantha Tuapen | Poster | Topology Map - Data Visualization Research, Strategy, and Exploration | Dell Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Raja Vijaya Sankar | Poster | Portfolio | VR Therapy: Building a Virtual World for Mental Health Treatment | School of Design and Creative Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Ashray Vinod Kumar Joshi | Poster | Portfolio | Designing a new subscription-based portfolio for the services unit in the Networking Industry | Extreme Networks Inc | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yiwei Wang | Poster | Creating a Service Blueprint for the Appointment Scheduling Process in Hospital | Legacy Health | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Victoria Wayland | Poster | Color Printing for the Austin Zine Community | Austin Zine Friends | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Naomi Wilkin | Poster | Making Meaning from Mess: Preparing Professional Services for Migration | SailPoint Technologies | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Di Wu | Poster | SearchIdea - an idea creation online system | the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Vanny Yeh | Poster | Portfolio | Revamping The Ring of Steel Website | UT Austin, School of Design & Creative Technologies | "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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Bo Zhang | Poster | Portfolio | Improving the accessibility of itisOVERDUEs public website | itisOVERDUE | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jiaqi Zhou | Poster | Redesigning the User Experience of Lifo Creator Hub for Content Creators | Lifo | 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. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Parker Zimmerman | Poster | Survey of Statewide Cooperative E-Book Purchasing Models | New Jersey State Library | E-content and e-books in particular are becoming an essential part of every public librarys collection. This is true despite the hurdles to acquiring and providing access to it. To address barriers related to cost, libraries in many states have adopted cooperative purchasing models that reduce the cost of e-books for member libraries. For my project, I have been asked by the New Jersey State Library to conduct research on the state of cooperative e-book purchasing and to identify successful models. In doing so, I have researched cooperative e-book models and licensing and have interviewed library staff from various state consortia who have implemented successful cooperative e-book purchasing models. The result of my project is a white paper which summarizes the current state of cooperative e-book purchasing and identifies four successful models for the purpose of helping to inform the state of New Jersey about how they may implement their own cooperative e-book purchasing model. | Spring 2023 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Claiborne Beary | Poster | Re-Envisioning Georgetown Public Librarys Youth Collection | Georgetown Public Library | Georgetown Public Library (GPL) is seeking to re-envision their youth collection. This re-envisioning involves looking at both the materials and the layout of the childrens area. In collaboration with youth librarian Bethni King, I became familiar with the population that GPL serves, evaluating GPLs existing collection, and creating a plan to adjust GPLs collection to meet ideal collection size metrics and the needs of the community. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Moonjeog Choi | Poster | Mini Program Development for Furniture Wholesale Company | Luxe Cabinet and Stone | Luxe Cabinet and Stone is a Chinese furniture wholesale company located in Seattle. The company has been putting efforts into promoting its products to its customers by making phone calls and sending emails, especially to Chinese customers. To help these Chinese customers more quickly access the companys product information, I decided to develop a mini program that runs on a famous social software called Wechat that Chinese people always use. This mini program specifically aims to help customers make appointments for store tours and view product galleries on their social software Wechat. The program is built within the Wechat Devtools where a lot of APIs are provided to realize the necessary features. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Stephanie Cyrill | Poster | Portfolio | Stitched: Redesigning the User Experience for Young Professionals Entering the Fashion Industry | Fashion Mingle | Fashion Mingle (FM) provides networking and educational opportunities to their members by connecting fashion professionals and students to the resources and services they need to grow their careers. Knowing the difficulty of breaking into the fashion industry as a young professional, FM aims to connect them to others in the industry by expanding their parent company into a student-focused platform, Student Mingle. Through the platform, students can connect with other students and professionals in the fashion industry, gain visibility in the fashion world, and boost their careers. To aid in the companys goals, in this project I will further build out Student Mingle and redesign the company's current UI to make it modern and engaging for users. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yitong Feng | Poster | Healthcare Spend Insight Data Analysis Project | Boehringer Ingelheim | My journey in the Master of Information Science program at UT-Austin is coming to an end, and I cherish the opportunity in iSchool to think critically, make connections, and utilize empathy to help shape the information and technology industry, and fit my future career path. Currently, I work for Boehringer Ingelheim and collaborate with the IT-EFP team to achieve business goals. I work with 2 business analysts and 1 data scientist on the HealthCare Spend Insight project, dealing with data sets of doctors budget and expense data, which involves Compliance Spend Data from Veeva Events, especially on Budget Management, Attendee Expenses, Events Attribution, etc, with looking for trends and anomalies among these topics and draw data-based insights for business partners to make scientific decisions. And I do hope from my perspective, I can answer the question: Can we leverage this spending data to deliver prescriptive and predictive insights to the Compliance function and help the company to control the cost? | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Angie Fong | Poster | Explainable AI in SaaS industry: Churn Prediction | NinjaOne | NinjaOne is a fast-growing IT management SaaS company. As the company expands, it's increasingly valuable to have a data-driven system to level up customer retention. The goal of this project is to build a churn rate prediction model which does not only help the sales team identify customers that are likely to end subscription, but also provides insights on top churn drivers which will help formulate better customer retention strategy. The key to success includes data engineering and MLOps effort, as well as business and statistics knowledge to explain insights from the model. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shruti Hanchinal | Poster | CBRE's Workflow Management System | CBRE | CBRE is one of the largest commercial real estate companies that encompasses advisory, valuation, consultation, and other services. At CBRE, my task was to recommend improvements to CBREs Valuation and Advisory Services systems through user research. The project objective was user research support for the product, design, and engineering teams from discovery through delivery. The primary focus was on an internal work management product used by property appraisers and managers. This product has 3 features: Assignment Tracking, Capacity Management, and Route Optimization. Assignment Tracking helps users monitor current projects. Capacity Management helps users understand how much availability they have to take on new work. Route Optimization helps them plan how to conduct the next inspection. To achieve this, I conducted heuristic evaluations for the current systems, to identify inconsistencies in designs and user flows. The next portion was to integrate into the system, functions that benefit the users by offering a seamless end-to-end assignment tracking and route optimization flow. For this, I used generative qualitative interviews to identify workflows and nuances to be included in the designs. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Nicole Inskeep | Poster | UNCLASSIFIED: Preserving Westmorelands Vietnam | LBJ Presidential Library | This project aims to assist the LBJ Presidential library with the preservation needs of a legacy collection, The Capital Legal Foundation Papers, in preparing the collection for long-term housing and public use by the research community. The collection consists of the litigation material generated from a 1984 libel suit brought by General William C. Westmoreland against four CBS employees associated with a Vietnam documentary titled The Uncounted Enemy A Vietnam Deception. This project addresses preservation needs for paper-based materials, removes classified language, and updates the finding aid to incorporate over 50 boxes of newly processed materials. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ashrai Jha | Poster | Portfolio | Data-supported telehealth app for mental health application | Moody College of Communication | I am working on a mental health application called, a project created by UT Austin, Professor S. Craig Watkins. This mental health mobile application helps users track their mood insights and activities in order to better manage their mental health. During this project, I have been working as a Visual Designer and Animator, and the goal is to iterate and redesign various application modules and flows using the existing design system. I have suggested new elements and components to refine the design and user experience. In addition, I have animated these flows and prototyped them. The animations will help demonstrate some of the key functions of the application while also illustrating the transitions to developers. At the end of the project, I will have multiple screens, sets of redesigns, prototypes, and animation on Figma. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Pei-Syuan Jhang | Poster | A Usability Study on Athena Advisory's Financial Advisory Service | Athena Advisory | Athena Advisory is a startup financial advisory firm that aims to provide automated approaches that help optimize customers' financial life. To improve the user experience of its recently published service platform and gauge if the current design and content are understandable and straightforward for users, this study uses unmoderated usability testing to uncover user pain points that need to be addressed, which will be shared through a detailed test report and user personas. Overall, the results found the profile-setting process needs to be shortened and streamlined; the dashboard should show more customized content and provide more explanations for infographics. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hyojeong Kim | Poster | Portfolio | Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) Dashboard using SHAP for ICU Length of Stay Prediction | The University of Texas at Austin | In this research, we create an XAI dashboard that predicts patients' length of stay in the ICU and provides key features that have a significant impact on LoS for specific patient cohorts and individual patients. Our results suggest that providing critical features in order to make clinical decisions can build the trust between doctors, patients, and AI. Our approach, based on a novel connection of clinical dashboard with explainable AI methods, discovers insight for helping clinicians that addresses emergent health conditions more effectively and reduces unnecessary procedures. Further, the logical user interfaces will be designed to facilitate the clinical decision support system. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jia-Jen Lee | Poster | Portfolio | Career Resources Dashboards Design | University of Texas at Austin, Texas Career Engagement | Texas Career Engagement (TCE) is reimagining the way students, alumni, employers, faculty, and staff prepare for the future of work togetherby engaging around careers in a way that is equitable and inclusive. Hence, My contribution to the capstone project are design & development of the dashboards collecting the career related information and existing career resources of each school/college for prospective students to make the decision and explore the resources. It also provides an efficient and easy-to-use way for faculties to maintain their career resources. The resulting Tableau dashboards allow users to filter, search the keyword, or click on the infographic to see more information. By interacting with the interface, users will be able to see all the career resources for each major and the different aspects of career statistical data. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yu Hsuan Liu | Poster | Portfolio | RGK Center website evaluation and redesign | RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, UT Austin | This project aims to help RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service increase the connections among students and nonprofit organizations and promote what they have done in research to society. We conducted the stakeholders interview and heuristic evaluation to gather business goals and pain points. Based on those insights from the research, we then reorganized the information architecture and ideated the design hypothesis via wireframe. Before building out the website by using the UT Drupal Kit, which is a website solution tailored to the Texas brand, we evaluated the wireframe with stakeholders to double-check the design did match their goals and user needs. So, the project outcomes includes: Research insight, Ideation Process, Redesign. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Maureen Maclean | Poster | WikiWARP: Wikibase Data Model for the Dean F. Echenberg War Poetry Collection | Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin | With my field supervisor, I developed a data model for the description of creators represented in the Harry Ransom Centers Dean F. Echenberg War Poetry Collection using the HRC's Wikibase test instance. As a proof of concept, this model is intended to link creators, places, languages, conflicts, occupations, and works on the library catalog. Currently, the library catalog does not allow users to search the collection by demographic information of the authors. The eventual goal is to allow for such querying by connecting the Wikibase instance to the library catalog, thus allowing for richer and more powerful querying for researchers. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sophia Mosbe | Poster | Open Pedagogy and Copyright at Texas State University: Preparing students for open assignments | Texas State University Libraries | As Texas State University continues to expand and develop its academic landscape, faculty are increasingly wanting to incorporate Open Pedagogy practices into their curriculum. To accommodate this, the University Libraries have begun to set-up the necessary infrastructure for such practices to be a success. The purpose of this project was to define and educate students regarding their rights when creating open assignments. This resulted in creating the Texas State University Open Pedagogy FERPA and Copyright License, along with a comprehensive Canvas module to duly educate students regarding these rights: both the control they are relinquishing and retaining. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Itohan Osagie | Poster | Visualizing Carnegie Mellon Universitys Robotics Archive | Carnegie Mellon University's The Robotics Project | CMUs The Robotics Project has devoted the past few years to capturing the history of the universitys robotics research, working toward the launch of their Robot Archive, which serves as a digital collection available to a wider audience. Given this, my role is to create a visualization tool based on the metadata to engage members of the community with or without interest or experience in robotics. This visualization project serves as an initial step to represent the interconnected relationships between projects, people and real-life applications by employing data wrangling and data storytelling techniques. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hsuan Ouyang | Poster | Consumer Insights Research for 3CUS IMPACT Social Impact Management (SIM) Services | 3CUS IMPACT | The purpose of the SIM consumer insights research is to better understand the customer of SIM services and build a concrete structure of the provided consulting services. The project determines the current and potential consumer target market, service needs, marketing strategies, engagement opportunities, techniques, and processes for SIM services. Specifically, I designed and planned the project including clarifying the project objective, identifying consumer groups, developing interview guides, and drafting related emails. Next, I conducted key informant interviews to collect research data. After summarizing and analyzing the collected data, I gave the team actionable recommendations. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Haley Petersen | Poster | A Survey of Surveying: Digitizing the Map Collection of 19th Century Empresario and Land Surveyor Stephen F. Austin | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | Since 1901, the University of Texasand by extent, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American Historyhas had in their possession a collection of maps that previously belonged to Stephen F. Austin, often hailed as the Father of Texas. Many of these unique hand-drawn maps and land surveys were completed by Austin himself in the course of his work settling Texas in the 1820s and 1830s. The goal of this project is to shine a light on this historic collection through digitization and online availability, including the creation of web-based content that will hopefully increase researchers interest in the materials. Using a state-of-the-art overhead camera setup capable of photographing the largest and smallest maps in the Briscoe Centers archives, I created high-quality digital images of all 119 maps and land surveys, which included several pamphlets of Austins field notes that give insight into his land surveying process. Each image will be embedded with detailed metadata, which I prepared according to the standards in use at the Briscoe Center. The end result is a collection of digitized maps that will help minimize the handling of the fragile originals and expand their reach to all those interested in learning more about this significant era in Texas history. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Miriam Rought | Poster | Accessioning and Archival Work with St. Stephen's Episcopal School | St. Stephen's Episcopal School | St. Stephen's Episcopal School has worked tirelessly towards equal opportunity education since its founding in 1950 as the first integrated boarding school in the southern U.S. This year, they are celebrating their 20th anniversary with their partner school, St. Etienne's, in Haiti. To commemorate this anniversary, I was tasked with accessioning a digital collection of photos and videos from school faculty involved with the Haiti project and creating a searchable repository of this collection. Additionally, I am proposing next steps for the digitization of the rest of the schools physical archives and integrate them into the schools current information system. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ishita Roy | Poster | Metadata Generation and Correlation from Network Traffic | Keysight | I have worked on Keysight's network visibility product solution AppStack, which performs packet monitoring that can scale with a combination of hardware (packet brokers) and software (VNF) to improve network traffic visibility. I was tasked with understanding the customer and product requirements including network architecture, network components, interfaces & communications between the network components, developing test plans in the form of test cases, and developing and validating automated test scripts so that the test cases can be executed successfully. Metadata correlation is done using the big data analytics tool Pulsar and the test cases are written and automated using Python. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Nidhi Shah | Poster | Portfolio | Research and design for XAI for a dashboard that helps understand the predicted length of stay in an ICU. | The University of Texas at Austin | The project explores the existing research on various user experience designs for explainable AI in the healthcare domain. Followed by the exploration, we experiment with possible designs for the dashboards providing explanations for the AI predicting the length of stay in an intensive care unit. These designs then underwent multiple modifications, post which we carried out concept testing with a doctor from Dell medical school to understand the effectiveness of our ideas. The project was carried out under the guidance of Prof. Ying Ding at the University of Texas at Austin. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yogita Sharma | Poster | Creating hybrid descriptions of digital and analog materials within finding aids at the Alexander Architectural Archives | Alexander Architectural Archives and UT Libraries - Architecture & Planning Library | Project goals: 1) To create a hybrid description for analog and digital photographic materials, while preserving original order in both, for the Buildings of Texas collection and 2) To test the University of Texas Libraries Born-Digital Archival Description Guidelines. Project outcomes: 1) Created an EAD inventory for a pre-selected set of digital images, mapped to their analog counterparts, 2) Ingested digital images into UT DAMS to generate a link for the finding aid, 3) Wrote hybrid descriptions for series and subseries abstracts and edited relevant sections of the EAD finding aid, and 4) Provided written feedback on UT Libraries guidelines. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kendall Shaw | Poster | Postcards from the Past: Continued Digitization of the Robert Runyon Photograph Collection | Briscoe Center for American History | The Briscoe Center for American History is the archival home of the Robert Runyon photograph collection. Runyon took many photographs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and Mexico, which were sold as postcards in the early 20th century. Over the course of the semester, I took responsibility for the processing and digitizing of two collections of these postcards that had recently been donated to the Briscoe Center. This included categorizing, writing item-level metadata, and digitally capturing the postcards to increase accessibility. Finally, I created a guide detailing my process, to assist with future integration of donations to existing collections. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Joanne Tsao | Poster | Portfolio | Redesigning GivePulse's Project, Pledge, and Resources Pages | GivePulse | GivePulse is a nonprofit community engagement platform that is looking to update the current look of the existing website and improve their interface visually and functionally. I am assisting the company with redesigning the screens for three different features on their website: Projects, Pledge, and Resources. The pages of the GivePulse website will be updated to reflect their current visual style style and provide a more intuitive experience for users. These new designs will be sent to the engineering team to be coded into live pages that will be implemented into the site in the upcoming months. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Ruyue Wang | Poster | Portfolio | Identifying knowledge gaps and simplifying user experience of Find Care | Premera Blue Cross | Premera is a health insurance organization offering Find Care tools to help members find doctors who meet their requirements. As a core touchpoint and task for customers in the healthcare journey, finding care is also an experience where Premera consistently gets negative customer feedback. The company is focusing on Find Care as one of highest customer experience priorities. My work aims to help inform the business what we know about the Find Care experience and to identify ways to simplify the member experience and satisfy their needs. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Huani Zeng | Poster | Redesign To Improve PayPal QR Code In-store Payment Experience | PayPal | There has been a great interest in contactless payments in light of the growing pandemic. Customers are searching for a simple, safe, secure payment option. In order to assist customers in achieving these objectives, PayPal is undertaking initiatives like QR code in-store payment. The feature has been launched, yet the experience is not frictionless to offer a simple and delightful payment experience. This project utilized interview and usability testing methods to learn about target users and uncover the pain points of existing design. The final deliverables are design solutions that aim to solve these pain points. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jiaxin Zhang | Poster | Information Management for SXSW Interactive Business & Tech Event | SXSW Interactive 2023 | My industrial capstone project focuses on researching global startups and potential speakers for SXSW Interactive 2023 (business & technology events) at Austin, TX. As planned, I was responsible for startup information research, screening, recording, analyzing and evaluating to create a large scale startup dataset for South by Southwest business and technology events in Spring 2023. To make sure the startup data is completely accurate, adequate and high-quality for SXSW, I have to fulfill three main criteria: First, each startup should be founded after March 2021, for SXSW aims to find startups in the seed or pre-seed stage all over the world; Second, the current funding status of each startup cannot exceed 8 million dollars; Third, each startup should belong to any one of these eight categories: (1) Artificial Intelligence, Voice and Robotics; (2) Enterprise and Smart Data; (3) Entertainment, Media and Content; (4) Food, Nutrition and Health; (5) Future of Work; (6) Innovative World Technologies; (7) Metaverse and Web3; (8) Smart Cities, Transportation and Sustainability for technology diversity and inclusion. I have accomplished this startup information research project in the past month using several platforms such as Crunchbase, PitchBook, social media and tech news websites. | Fall 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Dajae Fryer | Poster | Explainable AI (XAI) in Healthcare- an authentic data-driven design | School of Information | This project focuses on designing an explainable AI (XAI) application that can predict length of stay (LOS) of patients admitted into hospitals. The LOS of a patient admitted to a hospital can be a pivotal measure in the overall health of the patient. LOS measures are affected by many different factors such as type of admission, type of insurance/ lack of insurance, age, pre-existing conditions, diagnosis, etc. Our goal is to design with a focus on authenticity with a long-term mindset of patients becoming our target users. Currently, we are using Shapley diagrams to visualize our explanations. The explanations from our model can be used as a tool to aid physicians in making decisions that can greatly improve the care that patients receive. | Summer 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Christina Jia | Poster | Portfolio | Developing a Consistent IBM Design Crit System | IBM | Critique is an important step in the design process and one that is practiced at IBM. It's a crucial method of receiving feedback, sharing domain knowledge, maintaining organizational consistency, and gaining vision on other teams' work. However, not all teams have adopted crit and existing crit processes differ vastly. Participants feel pressured to present or struggle to find value in the activity, and in the end, responsibility tends to fall on the shoulders of facilitators. My mission is to rekindle excitement for design crit, increase sign-ups, lessen pressure on presenters and facilitators, and eventually create one consistent IBM crit system. To do so, I rounded up a diverse team of IBM designers, facilitated recurring sessions and workshops, advocated for design crit, and completed a number of deliverables such as Figma presentation templates and a formal sign-up. | Summer 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Neha Katkar | Poster | Portfolio | Improving the accessibility of a peer-led mental health support app | IC2 | To address the mental health crisis in the United States, the team at Institute for Media Innovation at the Moody College of Communication adopted a design thinking approach to better understand the barriers to accessing more viable forms of care. Among other things, the team learned that young people are leading the way to a mental health care future marked by the peer-to-peer health experience and inventive uses of digital platforms. Their research engages a fundamental question: how do we design more compelling tele-health experiences for humans? In this project, IMI is transforming primary research with mental health professionals, community-based health organisations, and young people to design a digital platform that points to a tech-enhanced future of mental health care marked by social support, de-stigmatisation, and behavioural activation. A mental health app may not fulfil its intended purpose without weighing accessibility in design. In order to ensure that this digital platform performs the same functions, achieves the same outcomes, and requires the same amount of time and effort for those with or without disabilities, my work centres around improving the accessibility of the platform. I am in the process of reviewing existing relevant literature, understanding Apple and Google's human interfaces guidelines for accessibility, exploring different accessibility testing plug-ins by Figma to be able to evaluate the current mobile app prototype's accessibility. The deliverable of the project would be a accessibility design framework to guide future work. | Summer 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Linnéa Marks | Poster | Portfolio | Systematicity by Design: Creating a Holistic Design System for Sentier Strategic Resources | Sentier Strategic Resources | Sentier is a research and design agency dedicated to providing organizations with user-centric solutions supported by data. While their business has flourished, their small size has left little time for non-essential upkeep, leading to a design agency without a design system or style guide of its own. To address this lack, I am creating a holistic, tailored design system for Sentier using a variety of UX research and design methods.Through a visual audit of Sentiers current brand assets, competitive analyses of other agencies design systems, style guides, and websites, and interviews with Sentier stakeholders, I am determining what elements would be most beneficial in this new system and how it might best fit into existing employees processes. The aim of this design system is to make their lives (and jobs) easier, so elements could range from color, typography, and imagery to templates and merchandise designs to a pattern library: whatever fill their most vital needs.My goal: create a (mostly) Figma-based design system that simplifies and expedites the process of crafting reports, presentations, proposals, and other products while also boosting the cohesiveness, reliability, and impact of the Sentier visual brand identity. | Summer 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Apurva Shah | Poster | Portfolio | Orion Trading Systems Mobile Application Concept & Design | Orion Trading Systems | Particularly since the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, there has been a growing interest into the stock exchange, market, options, cryptocurrencies and other similar financial options and investments. A number of companies have risen to occupy this space, and several platforms and services exist to help users manage their financial portfolios and make trades. The purpose of this project is to redesign the existing platform of Orion Trading Systems for use as a mobile device and application, alongside the existing web and desktop application. By building off the findings of a competitive analysis to understand the shortcomings and strengths of existing similar applications, I constructed an initial framework and built out the design to create an interactive high-fidelity prototype for the application. My goal is to provide an interactive base that can be developed through further iterations and eventually programmed into a functioning application for the software. | Summer 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Trisha Sinha | Poster | Portfolio | Enhancing User Experience for Dells Research (EDG) Library | Dell | The purpose of this project is to enhance the usability of Dells Research (EDG) Library: a digital platform that allows the current members of Experience Design Group (EDG) to share their resources within and across the different teams and guest users within Dell. The repository consists of numerous studies that were conducted by the EDG members, varying from different research areas and methodologies to different hardware/software products. As a part of this project, the proposed webpage designs will aim at providing an intuitive user experience by using consistent design patterns throughout. It will also offer an engaging user experience by letting them explore new areas of interest. All the design proposals will be based on findings from primary and secondary research. | Summer 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Gab Alderete-Cruz | Poster | Portfolio | Representation of Afro-Latinx Studies in the Libraries: Reformatting LibGuides and Curating Exhibits Grounded in Theory | UT Libraries | This is a two-part project consisting of revamping the Afro-Latina/o Studies LibGuide at the UT Libraries and curating an exhibit in the Scholars Commons at the Perry-Castaeda Library. The scope of the LibGuide focuses on U.S. Afro-Latinx sources and its purpose is to address the gap between knowledge and access for users. The LibGuide will be a primer on Afro-Latinx sources to get users more familiar with topics under this field and will be used as a starting point for further research in different areas such as, fiction and archival sources, for example. The exhibit showcases varying aspects of Afro-Latinidad to foster engagement of users and familiarize them with the Libraries collections and resources. Through showcasing Afro-Latinx visual and literary texts, this exhibit aims to illuminate the contributions of decolonizing projects and demonstrates that the Afro-Latinx diaspora is not relegated to one homogenous representation replicated in mainstream Latinx cultural productions. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Isabelle Antes | Poster | Portfolio | Study of longitudinal course survey material for online course to generate pedagogical change via implementable standardized custom survey battles | The University of Texas at Austin, LAITS | The purpose of this project is to fulfill a need for standardized supplemental survey question sets, also known as batteries, that generate relevant and useful student feedback that result in pedagogical design changes implemented in courses over time. The goal of this project is the longitudinal analysis of CC 303 WB surveys and the generation of standardized batteries that will be implemented in course surveys going forward. The long term impact of this project is the generation of pedagogical and instructional materials that can be implemented in courses resulting in timely and relevant feedback that will facilitate pedagogical and instructional responsiveness. This will be achieved through a foundational literature review, analysis of historical longitudinal data of the CC 303 WB course, the analysis of previous customized batteries, and evaluation of convergent concepts. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Roza Atarod | Poster | Portfolio | Loopring application evaluation and redesign | School of Information | Loopring builds infrastructure, and user-facing products for cryptocurrencies trading. They envision a digital economy where users are empowered and always in control of their assets. Loopring provides a low-fee, high-speed platform for trading. Even though Loopring provides the most advanced trading experience on Ethereum, its not intuitive and people barely understand what they have to do from onboarding screens. So I did background research and heuristic evaluation on the Loopring application to explore pain points. Then, I synthesized research data to find how I can develop the Loopring application to serve users more efficiently and inclusively. So the project outcomes includes: -Heuristic evaluation-Research insight-Redesign" | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Vanesa Ayon | Poster | Portfolio | Improving Skimmability: Experimental UX research study tracking screen-based scanning speed | University of Texas at Austin School of Information | As information has become more widely accessible in the digital environment, one of the most essential and prevalent interactions between humans and technology has been the reading of digital text. The immense volume of text thats easily accessible to us often outstrips the time we have available to read it. The purpose of this research project is to examine how information processing and reading in a digital environment has evolved over the years. Moving forward, with the lens of a user experience (UX) specialist, I review the research that examines the user interface design of text presentation on the web and identify elements that facilitate scanning in a digital reading environment. In doing so, I introduce (with the support of professor Randolph Bias) a new method of presenting text, called Mid-Word-Graying (MWG). MWG modifies the text darkness, or weight, of the inner-letters of a word, making the outside letters slightly bolder, in order to reduce crowding and aid our word recognition ability. In order to empirically determine whether MWG facilitates faster scanning of online text, I help design and then conduct a quantitative experimental research study that tests whether participants can scan for information faster using the MWG or regular view of text. The results of this study are then analyzed, summarized, and presented with further research and design recommendations. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Lacey Brooks-Canales | Poster | Portfolio | Promoting Librarianship as a Career: Outreach to Undergraduates to Demystify Librarianship | Coates Library at Trinity University | This video series and LibGuide was created for the Coates Library at Trinity University and is aimed at encouraging students from all backgrounds to consider careers in libraries, archives, and special collections. Using a series of recorded interviews and links for students to explore, this project hopes to attract and welcome a diverse candidate field by demystifying the process of becoming a librarian and highlighting the funding, resources, and organizations available to support students through the process. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Elle Carnley | Poster | Portfolio | Investigating Therapist Needs to Design a Better Therapy Provider Directory | Winnow | Winnow is a new Austin startup founded to improve the process of finding a therapist. Countless companies are trying to recruit therapy providers to serve the growing number of Americans who are seeking professional mental health support. (According to one 2021 survey, nearly 30 percent of Americans have seen a therapist during the pandemic, and 86 percent say its helped them cope.) By surveying 28 therapists and interviewing five, I discovered the needs and concerns of the types of therapists Winnow hopes to recruit. I also performed a competitive analysis to help identify the must-haves and opportunities in the mental health startup space. My goal: help Winnow build a strong foundation of user research insights from the start, so that the final product is usable and addresses real needs. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Daniela Chávez | Poster | Portfolio | Center for Teaching and Learning Resources Raising awareness and increasing user engagement for instructional resources | The University of Texas at Austin | The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) supports instructional development, campus collaborations, and increased opportunities for engaged and inclusive learning. This study uses UX research and design methodologies to uncover user pain points that need to be addressed within CTL, in both the digital and physical spaces. Pain points discovered in research will be shared via an updated set of user personas, a heuristic report, as well as a workflow plan that implements the needs of CTL clients and staff. Project focuses on increasing user engagement across all communication platforms to raise awareness of the resources CTL provides. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yiling Chen | Poster | Portfolio | Design an User Experience that Helps People Save For a Secure Retirement | Athena Advisory | Athena Advisory is a financial technology company providing its clients with sound financial advice. Talking with clients, they discovered that many people had barriers to develop a savings plan that would provide them with a financially secure retirement. This project aims to create a user experience that encourages people to begin saving for their retirement and to track their progress on the way to a prosperous retirement. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Misha Coleman | Poster | Portfolio | Digital Preservation and Access in the Casasola Studio Photograph Collection | C.L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, University of Texas at El Paso | Alfonso Casasola was a member of a famous family of Mexican photographers who established a studio in El Paso in the 1920s. The images from his studio in the Casasola Studio Photograph Collection at the C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department at the University of Texas at El Paso provide rich insight into El Paso area cultural history. This project focuses on digitizing large format photographic negatives, performing preservation tasks, providing metadata description, and depositing these objects in UTEP's CONTENTdm repository. Care is taken to use a consistent means of processing a sample of these materials using institutional procedures, and update existing documentation in consultation with project stakeholders. Digitization and online access will increase awareness and use of this collection for research, teaching, and community-building purposes. In total, approximately 150 images will be made newly available online. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Erin Coupal | Poster | Portfolio | State Of the Art: An Archival Assessment Towards a Visual Arts History of Austin | The Contemporary Austin | This project presents an in-depth examination into the history and evolution of establishing a major art museum in Austin from the formation of the Texas Fine Arts Association in 1911, Laguna Gloria Art Museum (1961), Austin Museum of Art (1992), Arthouse (2002), AMOA-Arthouse (2011), and finally to the current iteration, The Contemporary Austin (2013). Through conducting archival research, I set out to gain a greater understanding of what kinds of archives were held in various repositories: Dolph Briscoe Center of American History, the Austin History Center, and the museums own archives storage. Before undertaking a longer-term digitization project, the museum first needed to understand what records existed and where they were. With a more in-depth understanding of the existing, unseen archives, the museum can begin taking steps towards a robust archival program of their past and ongoing projects. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jonathan Dalcourt | Poster | Portfolio | Gathering Gathrs Ring: Developing a Mobile Apps Testing Framework | Homecooked | Gathr is a local startup centered around a new social events app. The project has been rapidly growing over the last two years, with little to no effort put towards user research. Over the course of six months, I designed and implemented a testing framework with three goals: (1) to create a template that future researchers at the company can easily modify for their needs; (2) to gathr feedback on their new event creation flow; and (3) to gain unique insight into the new user onboarding experience, a specifically critical pain point in their retention rates. I conducted three rounds of user interviews with 12 total participants, gaining invaluable customer insight and leaving behind a highly flexible set of testing resources. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Miriam Early | Poster | Portfolio | Sharing Local History: Supporting Georgia Public Libraries in the Creation of Digital History Exhibits | Georgia Public Library Service | The Georgia Public Library Service supports public libraries in Georgia through a statewide lending network, literacy programs, professional development and training for library staff, facilities support, computer and technical support, and grant administration, amongst other services and programs. The GPLS DigEx program supports public libraries in Georgia in the creation of local history exhibits through the online content management platform OmekaS. The DigEx program allows libraries in Georgia to tell vital stories about their communities using unique digitized materials hosted by the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG). My role as a capstone student working with GPLS was to provide management, training, and support for the libraries putting on these exhibits. I worked with three cohort libraries from Georgia to mount one exhibit each on OmekaS, for public launch by June 1st, 2022. The initial stage of the project involved familiarizing myself with the DigEx program guide, OmekaS, various digital humanities tools, copyright standards and practices, and training materials in mounting local history exhibits. During the second stage, I provided assistance and support to the participating libraries in the following areas: (1) employing the digital humanities tools Omeka and Knightlab Storytelling Tools to mount and supplement their exhibits; (2) conducting historical research and fact-checking; (3) facilitating the responsible use of digital materials in terms of copyright research and appropriate attribution standards; (4) curating exhibit content and developing exhibit narratives; and (5) attending monthly advisory sessions with cohort libraries to provide periodic feedback as the exhibits evolved. In the final stage of the project, I worked on updating the DigEx program guide to include additional digital humanities resources for future use. To this end, I produced four video tutorials for Knightlab Storytelling Tools and History Pin for inclusion in the program guide. I plan to continue working with GPLS through the month of May until the exhibits go live on June 1st. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Katherine Edwards | Poster | Portfolio | Wikipedia Edits for Mental Health Promotion | Hogg Foundation for Mental Health | The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health is a grantmaking organization that supports mental health resources and health equity across Texas by funding educational conferences, publishing informational content, and spearheading community engagement initiatives. My role as a Graduate Research Assistant was to expand the publics understanding of mental health history and drive interest in the Hogg Foundations archive through strategic additions and edits to pages on Wikipedia. I applied substantial modifications on three existing articles and wrote seven original articles on individuals, policies, and organizations that concern the foundations history and role in the development of mental health awareness in Texas. This project represents efforts to not only utilize available online resources for these crucial topics but also to raise awareness of the far-reaching impacts of the Hogg Foundation over the past 80 years. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Maribel Falcon | Portfolio | An Investigation into Repatriation for Indigenous People of Texas | School of Information | Repatriation is a growing issue for libraries, museums, and archives that will not go away anytime soon. In the United States, the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990 has set a precedent for institutions that receive federal funding to comply with an inventory of their human remains and items of cultural significance through a process that deaccessions the objects back to their communities of origin. In Texas, there are two cases in which Native American tribes are requesting remains of their ancestors for repatriation. This report discusses how the Indigenous people in Texas are represented through the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the history of NAGPRA, as well as an outline of both repatriation cases through qualitative analysis of news reports that cover the tribes claims. | Spring 2022 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Cailin Flaherty | Poster | Portfolio | Identifying User Segments for a Nutrition App | Dell Medical School Department of Population Health | The purpose of this project was to provide The Burgermaster Lab at Dell Medical School's Department of Population Health with a research plan to understand the needs and challenges that their target audience faces when working towards nutrition goals. The lab is developing an app, Nutri, to help physicians at federally funded clinics provide nutrition guidance to patients who may not otherwise have access to a nutritionist. NutriMe, the proposed patient-facing app to support patients working toward this goal in between doctor visits, will use the results of this research to present different experiences to user segments based on motivation, nutrition literacy, tech literacy, and social support. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Isabel Georges | Poster | Portfolio | Redesigning the Q2 Secure Messaging System | Q2 | Q2 currently offers Financial Institutions a secure messaging system as part of their back-office suite of products. This secure messaging system allows Customer Service Representatives and banking end users to communicate with each other. Feedback from generative interviews with CSRs suggests that there are several pain-points that cause frustration with this feature. Using these insights, I redesigned the secure messaging system to meet user needs and to enhance the user experience. I then worked with the research team to usability test the prototype. After synthesizing the results and creating recommendations, I presented the findings to the team. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jessica Gonzales | Poster | Portfolio | Evaluating Summer Learning with the Chattanooga Public Library | Chattanooga Public Library | Summer Reading Programs are a long-standing tradition of public libraries to engage communities and combat summer learning loss among children. Over the past few years, the Chattanooga Public Library has not observed any significant literacy or engagement impacts within the community because of Summer Reading Programs. For this project, I will conduct a literature review, consult with children's librarians, and analyze data to provide recommendations for future programming. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Elena Gonzales Melinger | Poster | Portfolio | Theory-guided approaches to User Research: using Self Determination Theory to guide app design | Dell Medical School, Department of Nutritional Sciences | Nutri is a tool for primary care doctors to help patients improve their nutrition through setting a goal. NutriMe is a proposed companion app that can help patients persist in working towards that health goal in between doctor visits. My challenge for this user research capstone was to test UI designs using a criteria influenced by Self-Determination Theory. My work consisted of requirements gathering, literature review, writing an A/B test that compared UIs that were examples of self-determination theory's basic psychological needs, and process documentation. In the future, this user test will be used to uncover insights about users regarding their nutrition literacy, SDT motivation style, and UX/UI design pattern preferences. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Melinda Hancock | Poster | Portfolio | Preparing the Austin History Center for Migration: from Legacy to ArchivesSpace | Austin History Center | The Austin History Center is planning to move its accession records and finding aid information from their current multiple Microsoft Access Databases where the information is stored. The migration will be completed by the company Lyrasis, but before that can be done, the Austin History Centers data required some clean-up to standardize the data and ensure proper migration. In addition to data clean-up, I completed a literature review of other institutions' instances of ArchivesSpace to provide insight into possible challenges that could arise, tips about best practices, and answer questions about how ArchivesSpace could be best utilized for the Austin History Center. Additionally, I created educational training materials for future and current staff and volunteers on how to use ArchivesSpace. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Zoe Heinsohn | Poster | Portfolio | Appraisal and Processing of the Ric Sternberg Collection at the Austin History Center | Austin History Center | The scope of my capstone involved appraising, describing, rehousing, and creating metadata for materials from Austin filmmaker Ric Sternberg for the Austin History Center (AHC), a branch of the Austin Public Library that preserves and showcases local history and culture. The collection spans Ric's decades-long career and consists of physical and born-digital audiovisual media, paper records, and artifacts. I created detailed collection and audiovisual media metadata using PBCore and produced a DACS-compliant finding aid for the AHC website. I then encoded an XML/EAD finding aid to be uploaded to Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) for widespread online access. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Emma Hetrick | Poster | Portfolio | Enhancing American Corners Programs in Italy | United States of America, Department of State | I am working with library programs affiliated with the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Specifically, I am working with the American Corner YouLab in Pistoia and the American Corner in Trieste. The goal of my project is to enhance the reading collections of both Corners, as well as create a better understanding of studying in the U.S. Over the course of the semester I will: 1) Create a virtual tour of a small selection of books to be shared on social media channels of both Corners; 2) Create a bibliography of U.S. books by authors of diverse backgrounds and about topics of diversity (especially race and disability) for young readers; 3) Participate in a virtual webchat with Italian students on studying in the U.S.; and 4) Participate in several virtual book reading club meetings. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jin Huh | Poster | Portfolio | Renzoe Match: A Data-driven Beauty Product Matching System | Renzoe Box Inc. | This project aimed at implementing a data-driven method to match consumer skin tone with beauty products such as foundations or concealers. Key technology includes computer vision, regression machine learning model (XGBoost), and Bayesian Optimization. This skin tone matching system extracts consumers' skin tone data from their selfie and processes them to adjust color distortion and analyze skin tone profiles to recommend 3 best matching foundations. Due to the pandemic, consumers have become more reluctant to visit cosmetic stores in person. One's skin tone can be changed due to extensive outdoor activities, aging, or cosmetic treatments. This method is expected to provide a hassle-free and accurate replacement for in-person foundation matching. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Minjae Jeong | Poster | Portfolio | Play the Right Club: Designing a User-Centered Golf Equipment Selection Tool | PGA Tour Superstore | Finding and getting "fitted" the right equipment can significantly improve a golfer's performance. But because of wide variety of selection and lack of knowledge, active promotions and advertisements by vendors lead consumers to build a preference, or bias based on companies and brands, not based on accurate data and performance. This tool is an alternative method of equipment selection process that maximizes the utility (satisfaction) of the consumer while minimizing the "regret" of choosing a specific shaft over others. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Kevin Joseph | Poster | Portfolio | Security Automation Framework for DOD Compliance | Army Software Factory | I am working with the Army Software Factorys development, operations, and security (DEVSECOPS) team to integrate security automation and compliance for daily operations and cloud infrastructure. As cloud infrastructure and networks become more complex, it becomes increasingly challenging to manage security compliance. My project will create a pipeline utilizing MITREs security automation framework with InSpecs testing and auditing security applications to aggregate all data within a hybrid cloud structure. Real-time risk assessments, as well as compliance posture, will be visualized with a Heimdall dashboard. Decision-makers will be able to assign appropriate remediation actions promptly. Security automation will reduce the need for manual operations that can result in slower detection, leaving systems vulnerable to compliance issues and attacks. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jooyeong Kang | Poster | Portfolio | Investigating disparities in hospitalization among COVID-19 patients in the United States | School of Information, Dell Medical School | Minorities and vulnerable communities in the United States have been considerably affected by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigates whether the pandemic had a differential impact on individuals based on demographic characteristics, such as race, gender, education, and income, by studying patients who tested positive for COVID-19 and were hospitalized due to COVID-19. I analyzed the demographic factors of the patients in a large-scale health record database system integrated with a database of publicly available consumer data by conducting descriptive and statistical analyses. Our analysis demonstrated which demographic and socioeconomic factors have more impact on hospitalization of the patients who tested positive for COVID-19. Through the logistic regression analysis, I found that there are some specific types of patients who are more likely to be hospitalized than others who did not have the same characteristics. Beyond the descriptive and statistical analyses, this understanding of the demographic factors of the patients in a commercial electronic health records system can be a foundation for further research on demographic and socioeconomic disparities in access to and use of medical resources and treatments, severity of illness, and complications during a pandemic. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Karan Karnad | Poster | Portfolio | Design of an analytics dashboard for a mental health platform | Moody College of Communication | The mental health platform incorporates psychological research to improve treatment for patients suffering from illnesses. Hence, the minimum viable product consists of a set of features whose efficacy can be determined by monitoring usage patterns. To enable this capability, a workflow will be designed that allows stakeholders to understand current product usage and make informed decisions regarding future enhancements. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Lexi Kiil | Poster | Portfolio | Consumer Health Libguide for the Dell Medical School | University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School | This project created a Consumer Health Libguide for the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School to serve patients and the community in order to improve health literacy and understanding and advocate for patients' health. As a result, patients and their families are able to discuss with their medical care provider concerns they may have regarding their medical care needs. Topics include addiction (alcohol, drug, smoking cessation), cancer (breast, lung, prostate, skin), diabetes (prediabetes, type 1, type 2, gestational), exercise, family planning (birth control, infertility, pregnancy and delivery), heart disease (coronary artery disease, heart arrhythmia, heart valve disease, heart failure), mental health (anxiety, depression, eating disorders, personality disorders, PTSD / CPTSD, and psychotic disorders) and nutrition. Resources are provided in both English and Spanish | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Saebom Lee | Poster | Portfolio | Notification System and Hierarchy Research & Design Suggestions for Hardware Device Management | Logitech Inc. | With the trend of content creation and streaming, and office work with Gen Z, the need to register and manage multiple sets of devices and multi-profiles has been soaring. With this trend, yet, notification components throughout G HUB do not follow best practices and are not constructed in a reusable fashion. This research project aims to validate the structure of the notification system in the gaming device management tool for Logitech Inc. It also defines the user need for the gaming device management and how to use a notification system for the target group through research. In addition, the research result will be followed by low-fidelity wireframe design mock-ups. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yingjie Li | Poster | Portfolio | Improve the Using Experience of Children and Screen Institution's Website to Bridge The Interdisciplinary Research and Real Life | Children and Screens: Institute of Digital Media and Child Development | Children and Screens is an interdisciplinary nonprofit organization based in New York, which seeks objective, scientific answers to questions about the cognitive, psychological, physical, and health impacts of digital media on toddlers, children, and adolescents. My work was to summarize current problems on the website, create a design system for the whole website and design the homepage. After continuous work, the sites information architecture and visual style were totally updated, allowing for easy content consumption and interactivity. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Lucius Lomax | Poster | Portfolio | The Nightingale Project | School of Information | Revealed by the Wall Street Journal in 2019, the Nightingale Project was designed as an agreement between Google Health and the Ascension Healthcare Family to transfer patient data, without patient permission, from Ascensions 2600 hospitals and clinics to Google for further data wrangling and to inform Googles own and significant healthcare inquiries. First viewed by independent advocates as a privacy nightmare and a further encroachment by Big Tech on individual liberties, it is the contention of this paper that, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, that Nightingale and similar projects may not go far enough in data-sharing, that should include cooperation across international borders. One possible method to ensure that exchange may be the creation of markets for healthcare data. | Spring 2022 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Morgan Lubenow | Poster | Portfolio | Camp Kachina Nature Center Development | Girl Scouts of Central Texas- Camp Kachina | The Nature Center at GSCTX Camp Kachina featured a diverse Texas-oriented collection, but without any clear formatting and only makeshift shelving. The goal of this project was to make this space more usable for groups who visit on the weekend and for staff who may not have a large knowledge of collection materials. Over the course of this semester, I ensured that the collection is clean, safe to handle and labelled properly for easy usage. Additionally, I improved the collection housing and shelving. These changes have already made a difference in the experience for kids and staff! | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Andrew Lueker | Poster | Portfolio | Automating the Onboarding Process: Increased Efficiency Through Automation | AMBA (Association Members Benefits Advisors) | In an increasingly digital age, eliminating mundane or repetitive tasks greatly increase the efficiency of existing workers, who may then direct their attention elsewhere to more dynamic tasks. For this project, my partnering organization, an insurance company located in Austin, asked me for my assistance in helping to automate their onboarding process. I utilized software such as Power Automate, Microsoft Forms and Power Apps, Sharepoint Lists, and Outlook to automate the process through a series of emails and forms a candidate will then fill out. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Audrey Manchester | Poster | Portfolio | Developing Health Equity Resources at Dell Medical School | Dell Medical School | The goal of this project with Dell Medical School was to create a research guide on health equity for use by students, faculty, and researchers, as well as to provide recommendations on collection development efforts and the addition of relevant library resources to support the medical education programs newest curriculum core competency. The guide serves as a starting point for those looking to learn more about health equity, explaining root causes of health inequities and how structural and social determinants of health affect access to healthcare. The resources identified help inform clinical practice and pioneer policies to eradicate healthcare disparities. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Ariantze Otto | Poster | Portfolio | The Process of Processing: The Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education Records Additions | LLILAS Benson Latin American Collection | The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is one dedicated to cultivating, preserving, and making accessible the physical materials related to Latinx presence in North/Central/South America. In continuing this mission, I fully processed the Texas Association of Chicanos in Higher Education Records (TACHE) additions. This included arranging the ten to twelve linear feet of records into the appropriate sub-groups, series, sub-series, and files according to the existing hierarchy established by past processing archivists, carrying out standard preservation practice to increase the collections longevity, and adding the collection to the existing TACHE record finding aid and EAD to ensure sufficient user accessibility. Completing this project allows future patrons to explore these records in their entirety for various purposes, including research and teaching. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Marley Philips | Poster | Portfolio | Processing Bowie County Archeological Records at TARL | Texas Archeological Research Lab | For my project at the Texas Archeological Research Lab (TARL), I assessed the condition and stability of the records from the 1938 41BW3 and 41BW4 WPA excavations in Bowie County, Texas. After rehousing the documents to increase their stability, I created an inventory of records using TARLs collection management guidelines. This work will prepare the documents for later creation of digital proxies of these records, and ultimately, allow researchers greater access to their records. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Alexander Reese | Poster | Portfolio | Georgia Tech Professional Education Course Portfolio Management Dashboards | Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) | Georgia Tech Professional Education (GTPE) creates credentials and courses for online Master degree programs as well non-credit courses requested by outside organizations. Until now, GTPE had no structured intake process for evaluating, prioritizing, and initiating these courses. My capstone project contributed to the development and support of this intake process through data flow diagramming, data wrangling with Python, and data visualization with Tableau. The resulting dashboards allow external requestors to track the progress of their course's development and allow internal GTPE executives to make data-driven intake decisions based on each course's projected business value, resource requirements, and risks. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Claire Ridley | Poster | Portfolio | Evaluation of Microform Holdings at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas | Teacher Retirement System of Texas | I worked with the Teacher Retirement System of Texas' Records Management Department to evaluate the current condition of its microforms, and give recommendations for the long-term physical preservation or potential digitization of its holdings. The agency is preparing to move into a new office and is using this as a catalyst to evaluate the physical state of its microforms and storage practices, and also gain intellectual control over its microform holdings. My goal working with the agency was to research best practices for the storage and handling of microforms, explore options for digitization as well as best practices for moving its holdings, give recommendations for microform storage at the new office location, as well as give recommendations for gaining intellectual control over holdings and how to handle the disposition of microforms that have met their retention. This project culminated in a report with recommendations for long-term preservation of the agencys microform holdings, a risk analysis of potential options for the microforms, including digitization and moving the holdings to the new office, and a presentation to executive leadership with the recommendations. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Sung Joon Roh | Poster | Portfolio | Data Wrangling: Product Inventory Management for Momezon Korean Market | Momezon Korean Market | I produced a data pipeline for product inventory management for Momezon Korean Market, a local grocery market I worked at when I was in high school. The manager still uses MS Excel to handle inventory management to this day, so I offered help by creating a workflow that automates the process of transferring his spreadsheets into a MySQL database controlled by phpMyAdmin, an open source database management tool. Through a workflow that involves reading, cleaning, and scripts that query the data, the result will be a more powerful way of managing data for my old boss. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Karla Roig Blay | Poster | Portfolio | AAHC Data Migration: Improving Data Management and Access in Museum and Collection Records | UT Austin Mesoamerica Center | The Art and Art History Collection (AAHC) holds over 3,000 objects primarily from the Indigenous Americas (US Southwest, Mesoamerica, and South America). This UT Austin collection is largely invisible because its only accessible through DASe and ARTstor, two image databases that require a UT log-in. With this project, I initiated a data migration from the collections previous state in local spreadsheets to a Collection Management System that allows for the AAHC to be not only managed and organized in a relational database, but also be accessible and discoverable through a public-facing website. Additionally, I ensured data sustainability by creating and documenting workflows for cataloguing and processing. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Esteban Salinas | Poster | Portfolio | Recataloging and Expanding the Collection of the George and Elvira Cisneros Learning Library | The George and Elvira Cisneros Learning Library | This project involves working with the collection of a private library created by former San Antonio mayor, Henry Cisneros, comprised of books he has acquired over the last few decades. His intention for the library is for it to become a useful organization for the community to use, especially the lower-income students from neighboring schools. In order to accomplish this, I decided to inventory and catalog their collections as well as suggest and implement a professional form of categorization, the Dewey Decimal system. This will be done by using LibraryThing to create a catalog and further expanded using TinyCat Library to allow for lending and circulation services. The second part of this project is creating a Collection Management plan for the library to utilize in future planning and acquisitions. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Chloe Santiago | Poster | Portfolio | A Path to Funding for Historically Underfunded Public Libraries | EveryLibrary | I worked with EveryLibrary to build a framework for a grant for a program to train library leaders on power building and political and financial literacy. This program will be specifically geared towards libraries who struggle to receive adequate funding, particularly those in low-income areas and historically BIPOC communities, so that library leaders can confidently lobby for increased funding from both their municipal governments and outside funders. My project allows EveryLibrary to quickly and efficiently apply for a variety of grants to fund the project. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Kathryn Senn | Poster | Portfolio | News and Source Evaluation: A LibGuide to Assist Students in Identifying Misinformation, Disinformation, and Bias While Conducting Online Research | Eastern Michigan University | In the age of rampant "fake news," it is imperative that college students learn how to identify misinformation while conducting research online. For my Capstone project I worked with the Eastern Michigan University Library to develop a new LibGuide dedicated to Misinformation, Disinformation, and Bias. I began this project by assessing the current LibGuides and developing a survey for librarians to fill out. This helped identify areas of the LibGuides that need to be reinforced. I then performed a literature review to see what current and emerging methods in Library Instruction are regarding evaluating news and other online sources. This step of the process also included examining LibGuides on misinformation and news and source evaluation from other academic institutions. The deliverables for this project were: A survey to identify gaps in the institution's current guides on source evaluation, a new LibGuide dedicated to identifying misinformation, and guidelines for evaluating the relevancy and currency of the LibGuide and its resources moving forward. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Amanda Shumate | Poster | Portfolio | Updating Dealer Agreements and Account Information | TOP Equipment Distributors | I will be performing an update of dealer account information for TOP Equipment Distributors. The company has written agreements with each of our dealers, and those documents require accurate information, as well as regular review and renewal. We also require certain types of documentation we did not ask for in years past and will be requesting these. Dealers will receive an email providing them with a link to our electronic update form. When the dealers new agreements are prepared, we will send them to the owners for electronic signature via DocuSign. We will track our progress using a shared spreadsheet. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Carl Siegel | Poster | Portfolio | Designing a workflow for the description of architectural drawings in EAD finding aids at the Alexander Architectural Archives | Alexander Architectural Archives | Architectural drawings are an important material type within many of the collections at the Alexander Architectural Archives (AAA). Historically, AAA practices for including information about architectural drawings in finding aids have utilized multiple different methodologies, including both directly encoding descriptive information in EAD finding aids and through use of spreadsheet attachments. The recent migration of AAAs finding aids to the new Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) 2.0 website has provided an opportunity for re-evaluating these methodologies and establishing a single, standardized workflow for creating access points for AAAs architectural drawings. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Emily Simpson | Poster | Portfolio | Dell Medical School Library Historical Books Collection: Cataloging, Description, and Collection Policy | Dell Medical School Library | This project focuses on a collection of approximately 125 historical medical books at the Dell Medical School Library at UT Austin. A small group (about 25 volumes) of these books are recent acquisitions and have not yet been cataloged. The remaining volumes in the collection have been provided MARC catalog records. The first objective of this project will be to enhance intellectual control of the collection. Uncatalogued books will be catalogued, and all books will receive detailed descriptions and condition assessments. The second objective is to provide information and documentation that will serve future library acquisitions. In order to achieve this objective, the project includes the research and writing of a collection policy for the library. The goal of this document is to inform potential donors of the librarys procedures and priorities as they relate to both modern and historical volumes presented for accession. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Loan Tran | Poster | Portfolio | Recruitment for UX Research: Process Documentation | Sentier Strategic Resources | Before UX researchers can talk to real users and gain insights that will influence important decision-making, these representative users, or participants, need to be found. Recruitment is an essential step before data collection can begin. This project examines the recruitment process at a UX research and design agency as they work with external vendors. Through internal interviews and assessment of current resource documents, I identified a need to revise the agencys recruitment guide and create a vendors master list. The updated guide will serve as a living document detailing the key steps and considerations learned from working with external vendors on recruitment. In addition, the vendors master list makes it easy to reference past, current, and potential future vendors. These two documents are designed to help streamline the recruitment process and can be used as training materials for new hires. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Sarah Varenhorst | Poster | Portfolio | Addressing Health Misinformation: A LibGuide for San Diego County | San Diego State University | The purpose of this project is to contribute significantly to the development of a LibGuide based in San Diego State Universitys repository of LibGuides as part of a project by San Diego Circuit, an organization of San Diego libraries that is currently working to address the health misinformation crisis in San Diego County. I began this project by developing personal criteria for resource contributions, based on the HON (Health on the Net) code of information and other resources. I then used these criteria to contribute information and resources to the LibGuides basic health information sections and other sections, with a focus on addressing COVID-19 information such as vaccinations. The outcome of this project is a health information LibGuide for use across San Diego County. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Weifeng Wang | Poster | Portfolio | Improving the User Experience of the COVID-19 Portal | School of Information | AI health Lab had created the COVID-19 Portal in the 2020 Fall, which is a resource of research papers about COVID-19, bioentities, and related fields. Through the COVID-19 Portal, researchers can quickly query COVID-19 related bioentities, paper authors, and institutions. As the initial version of the webpage was launched, some user experience issues were discovered. In order to improve the user experience, this project is to iterate the design of the COVID-19 Portal. As a UX designer, I created the iterative version of the COVID-19 Portal landing page through user testing, wireframing, prototyping, and other design methods. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| David Weintraub | Poster | Portfolio | Supporting and Strengthening Impact of UX Research at Q2 Software | Q2 Software | Q2 Software has conducted user research for roughly five years and, as a result, the company has amassed hundreds of studies during this time. The discovery of relevant, historic research is difficult within the current repository, SharePoint, which potentially lessens the continued impact of the research. Furthermore, given existing resources and constraints, qualitative analysis of user research data has been variable and, oftentimes, less thorough. Therefore, in Fall 2021, Q2 Software purchased Dovetail, a UX research repository and analysis tool. The purpose of my capstone was to support the development of Dovetail to meet Q2 Softwares needs. Namely, my capstone project worked toward the following goals: (1) Build out historic research conducted at Q2 Software within Dovetail, (2) Create a set of guidelines for creating and navigating projects in Dovetail, and (3) Create a set of guidelines for qualitative analysis in Dovetail. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Rebecca Wells | Poster | Portfolio | Best Supporting Administrator: Developing Management and Curatorial Skills through the Ransom Center Gala and Robert De Niro Exhibition | Harry Ransom Center | In the Fall of 2022, the Harry Ransom Center will host its 65th anniversary gala and exhibit the collection of Robert De Niro—focusing on his education and early career—in celebration of its world-renowned film collection and the continued support of actor, producer, and director Robert De Niro. The Ransom Center seeks to ensure the perpetual stewardship of its film collection by raising $3 million to endow the De Niro Family Curator of Film. In support of these goals, I served as Project Managerfilling a staffing gap for the temporary needs of the galain which I provided project planning and management assistance, served as the liaison for the institution-wide initiative, and developed the project plan, timeline, and committee and meeting structures. I also served as Curatorial Assistantco-curating the exhibition and working with the Curator of Film to meet the uncommonly tight exhibition deadlines set by the galaduring which I selected, interpreted, and tracked materials for the exhibition using finding aids, in-house databases, and Aeon archival software, created layouts, and assisted in preservation assessments for exhibition. As a result, I developed invaluable real-world management and curatorial skills while fulfilling the needs of the Harry Ransom Center. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project |
| Aris Wells | Portfolio | Dashboard for ICU Length of Stay Prediction Algorithm | School of Information | Accurate predictions of patient length of stay (LOS) for visits to the intensive care unit (ICU) present an opportunity to improve hospital planning and ensure that clinical resources are efficiently managed. The goal of this project is to develop a dashboard that presents the predictions of an existing explainable deep learning algorithm developed by Tianjian Guo, Indranil Bardhan and Dr. Ying Ding in a way that is useful to clinicians and hospital administrators. | Spring 2022 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chris Daily | Portfolio | Digital Multi-Track Recording and the Audio Archive: Establishing an Archive for the Modern Musician | N/A | A finished song contains more moving pieces than one might expect - one song might be made of several individually recorded instruments; these different instruments might have had multiple attempts to reach the final performance; there might be different audio effects applied to each instrument; there might be different versions of how these parts were mixed together. Suddenly, one song now becomes significantly more. This leads to many questions for an archivist as to how to responsibly capture everything. This project outlines initial attempts to contend with such questions through the recordings of an Austin, TX record label. | Fall 2021 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ningyue Shang | Portfolio | Onboarding Commerce Data In A Manufacturing Company's CRM System | Available In-Person Only | The CRM platform aims at providing customer-related information to agents to resolve customer concerns. Currently, our stakeholders need to review commerce data through multiple platforms (order management, shipping management, etc.) and a Tableau which can take time to load. In this project, I created a design to onboard customer commerce data into our CRM, which enables agents to quickly access all answers within one application, thus saving more time and agent labor. | Fall 2021 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chun Wei Wang | Portfolio | Language Learning Game - Demo Testing | Odeum | Review and structure user testing for the demo of the Chinese learning game: Mulan. | Fall 2021 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jing Zhu | Portfolio | Improve Convenience for Patients to Share Data with Clinics via a health-ID Wallet App | Dell Medical School & UT School of Information | As of 2015, 96% of medical records in the US are stored electronically, but the data is not shared, resulting in a fragmented system of data silos. It's very common that people need to fill the same forms over and over again, to digitalize medical records at different clinics. To solve the problem above, UT Medical School created a conceptualized wallet-like app for digitalization and management of patient health ID and requests help in improving the user experience for the app. I collaborated with UX researchers and professors from Medical School to identify the concept apps usability problems and created/iterated prototypes to refine user flow and navigation, and get a minimum viable product. | Fall 2021 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hesam Andalib | Poster | Portfolio | BHIL Website Design | Dell Medical School | The purpose of my project is to design and implement a website for Blockchain in Health Impact Lab associated with Dell Medical School. This lab is led by Dell Medical Schools Division ofHealth Information and Data Analytic Sciences and will serve as a platform for researchers, students and educators active in the field of blockchain and healthcare to be informed of educational seminars, panel discussions and new publications in the field. This website is to highlight the role of this lab and its contributors in filling the gap between healthcare technologies and blockchain applications and its content will be easily managed and updated through a Wordpress Content Management System (CMS). | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Amber Appel | Poster | Portfolio | Reworking the Texas Observer Archives | The Texas Observer | The Texas Observer is an Austin-based nonprofit news organization that has been publishing magazines since 1954. Currently, their website includes a web archive of their born-digital content and a print archive containing digitized scans of their magazine issues from the past 60+ years. Using principles of information architecture and design, metadata, and digital collections, I created a report that analyzed the archives in their current state, set out the Texas Observers goals for a new design, and made recommendations for how the archives can be improved to optimize discoverability, searchability, and browsing for their rich backlog of content. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Christopher Birmingham | Poster | Portfolio | A Comparative Analysis of Nonverbal Communication in Online Multi-User Virtual Environments | School of Information | This paper examines how nonverbal communication in virtual environments have evolved since their early inception by examining landmark platforms to represent the different periods of advancement in the capabilities of their contemporaries. It examines how some forms of NVC are translated directly from face-to-face to a digital avatar, as well as novel forms of NVC that evolve from the platforms themselves. This article will analyze how these translated and novel forms of NVC can indicate broader trends in the ways that people communicate through digital avatars, and provides some recommendations for further research into this subject. | Spring 2021 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Ann Marie Blackmon | Poster | Portfolio | Rethinking Artifact Curation: Updating Archaeological Laboratory Procedures at the Curatorial Facility for Artifact Research | Texas Historical Commission | The Curatorial Facility for Artifact Research (CFAR) holds thousands of artifacts from the archaeological investigations of 32 historic sites in Texas under the jurisdiction of the Texas Historical Commission - Historic Sites Division. The Historic Sites Division is dedicated to curating the collections and making them widely accessible to researchers and for future exhibition. To aide in this goal, I created, revised, and updated their laboratory curation procedures and policies manual. In doing so, I explored how to make collections and objects accessible while broadening their usability through implementing information methodologies surrounding description and cataloguing. Additionally, I incorporated physical and intellectual preservation methods, and considered notions of subjective and objective value. The final laboratory manual will serve as a guide to curating legacy, current, and incoming collections. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Brittany Bratcher | Poster | Portfolio | Evaluation of Metadata Completeness in a Dataverse Repository Self-Deposit Model | Tesas A&M University Library | The purpose of this project was to assess the current state of the Texas Data Repository metadata in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the Texas A&M University collection. This assessment will support library efforts to provide targeted guidance to researchers as they prepare data for deposit. In collaboration with Texas A&M University Library staff, we developed a metadata rubric that focused on a limited set of criteria essential for data sharing and reuse. We then trained a group of volunteer raters in the rubric's use and analyzed the measure of agreement among raters to determine the rubrics' effectiveness. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Claire Chang | Poster | Portfolio | Job Seeker Ad Targeting Evaluation | Indeed | The project aims to help job seekers to be matched with great job opportunities, and investigate eleven ad placements across platforms. We conducted the quantitative research using the survey to measure how different factors such as ad placements, job relevance, and targeting reasons can affect job seekers preferences over certain job opportunities. This research seeks to report findings that identify how the mechanisms can be improved to provide better matches, and inform designs to present job opportunities that bring better experiences. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Pei-Chih (Patrick) Chao | Poster | Portfolio | Dashboard Project: IPEDS Financial Aids and Student Charges | Institutional Reporting, Research and Information Systems, The University of Texas at Austin | In 2020, the world is in a covid panic. Many people are in crisis and even lost their jobs. These factors have led to another crisis in the opportunities for students to receive higher education. Therefore, we can expect that more students will need financial aids. In order to help our future research on the above issues, I used the data related to financial aid and tuition on IPEDS (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System) to make the dashboard including a scatter plot, two bump charts, and two Treemaps. For different topics, my dashboard can clearly provide comparisons between universities and provide a ranking or detailed information. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Debbie Chen | Poster | Portfolio | Dell Graph Data UI System with GraphQL, React and D3 | Dell Technologies | In support of Dells Data Management research program, this project aims to design a Graph UI System to enable any user to experience and interact with diverse data and machine intelligence systems in a symbiotic and native way. Based on their users needs and database usage, I designed the Graph UI System with Figma first, then implement it with React.js, react-d3-graph, and GraphQL. Using this system, people can query the data and understand the context at the same time. It might also be a potential example for people to interact with graph data visualization in the future. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Kunyu Chen | Poster | Portfolio | Developing Interactive Web Elements for Texas Open Data Portal | Texas Open Data Portal | Texas Open Data Portal (ODP) is an online platform that supports agencies and organizations to publish data to engage citizens, improve operations, and foster transparency. My project is to design and develop interactive web elements that could help engage the audience and better target information for constituents. I conducted user research with the Texas Open Data Portal customers, which are the agencies and organizations that publish data on the Texas Open Data Portal. Based on the user research, I selected six types of web interaction that would be ideal for the Texas Open Data Portal, and created nine corresponding interactive web elements. In addition, I made a demo page and a tutorial to help the Texas Open Data Portal customers with the interactive web elements. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Martha Clark | Poster | Portfolio | Austin History Center Website Redesign | Austin History Center | I worked with the Austin History Center to prepare recommendations for a website redesign scheduled to begin in the Summer of 2021. The goal of the Austin History Center is to make their website more accessible to their various users. After analyzing the Austin History Centers current web presence and compiled documentation I created a project plan. This plan included a staff survey, heuristic evaluation of the website, competitive analysis of peer websites, user card sorting exercise, and the building of a wireframe. All my work and recommendations will be documented in a final report and presented to the Austin History Center to guide their redesign work. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Katie Coldiron | Poster | Portfolio | Bilingual Justice: Creating Spanish-Language Metadata for the Texas After Violence Project | Texas After Violence Project | The Texas After Violence Project is a community-based archive and documentary project located in Austin, Texas that seeks to cultivate deeper understandings of the impacts of state-sanctioned violence on individuals, families, and communities. Their archive includes a current collection of 103 public-access interviews with individuals from across the state of Texas and a variety of different walks of life. My capstone project sought to translate the Dublin Core-style metadata of these interviews from English to Spanish, including subject headings, rights statements from the Creative Commons, and abstracts of each interview. I also translated TAVP's main finding aid from English to Spanish. By investing in a translation project, TAVP hopes to create a more inclusive and accessible archive, particularly for the many Spanish-speakers in Texas that are impacted in some way or another by state-sanctioned violence. This project is dedicated to the memory of my great-uncle Jerry Lehman, who always showed an active interest in whatever I was up to. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Caroline Collins | Poster | Portfolio | Increasing Access to the Archivo General de Indias and the Archivo General de Mxico Collections at the Briscoe Center for American History | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | This capstone project explores the history and provenance of the Archivo General de Indias and the Archivo General de Mxico collections at the Briscoe Center, which contain transcriptions of original materials housed at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, and the Archivo General de la Nacin in Mexico City, Mexico, respectively. It also examines the contents of the collections, the relationship between the two collections and other Spanish and Mexican-related collections at the Briscoe Center, disparities found in them, and the changes in organization to the collections throughout their time at the Briscoe Center. In exploring such topics, this project seeks to increase the accessibility of the collections to the public and ensure they are discoverable online. The deliverables of the project include a LibGuide, which synthesizes the findings gathered for this project into a multi-part guide to help researchers use the collections, and revision recommendations, for Briscoe Center staff, for transferring the contents of the collections existing paper-based documentation into digital finding aids. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jiajun (Janet) Dai | Poster | Portfolio | Postpartum support-bot: An AI-powered chatbot for parents with postpartum | Institute for Media Innovation | The project is supported by Postpartum Support International (PSI). Postpartum disorders affect up to one in five women globally, but most of them are left untreated. The objective of the project is to design an AI-powered chatbot application that helps parents with postpartum easily seek support and get comfort. We analyzed hundreds of PSI conversation data and developed personas and user journeys to inform the chatbot design. However, our NLP model in the chatbot is not mature enough, so we first developed a hard-coded prototype to test the effectiveness and reliability of the concept. We believe that by improving the chatting experience, we can make up for the AI limitations and establish a trusting relationship with users. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Audrey Dalton | Poster | Portfolio | Drafting Zine Collection Development Policy. | Austin History Center | Many libraries collect zines (a type of homemade magazine) in order to better represent marginalized perspectives within their communities. I have worked with the Austin History Center to draft a policy on how to expand their own zine collection. First, I looked through their spreadsheet to see what zines are already in their collection. I then researched similar policies at peer institutions using both information posted on their websites and survey responses from their employees. My main deliverable is a draft policy incorporating my knowledge about the practices of other libraries with comparable collections. It includes a brief outline of the collections scope and importance, followed by suggestions for where the Austin History Center can acquire zines and how to treat them once they are accessioned. I recommended that they solicit donations on their websites and through fliers placed in local coffee shops, in addition to collecting zines at a local zine festival and buying them directly from distributors. One of my other suggestions was that zines be inventoried upon accession, and then hopefully cataloged at some point so that the collection can be shared through WorldCat and ZineCat. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Rishi Dhaka | Poster | Portfolio | Predicting Foundation Gifting Capacity | University of Texas Reporting, Analytics and Data Team | Accessing public IRS 990 forms and scraping data of different foundations under management at UT to devise metrics for non parametric predictive models that forecast the giving capacities of the trust funds in the future. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Metinee (Nuoxi) Ding | Poster | Portfolio | Streamlining Professional Profile Management for Healthcare Professionals | Kamana | Kamana is a tool that empowers healthcare professionals by providing them with a place to store and update every aspect of their professional profile, and connecting them to staffing agencies for job opportunities. This project focuses on streamlining the user experience of the Kamana app, encouraging users to fill out their profiles more thoroughly to maximize the visibility of their profiles to different agencies and in turn the breadth of their potential opportunities. My design explorations go into how the interface can support users in quickly and accurately filling out their profiles on-the-go, and incentivize them to fill out their profile to completion. The final deliverables included a prototype for entering medical history information, as well as design documentation for a more user-friendly navigation system. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Mia Eltiste | Poster | Portfolio | Learning the Hard Way: How Young Adults are Navigating the Healthcare System and Opportunities for Improvement | Athenahealth | Healthcare is an inevitable service for millions of people, yet it remains a complex, confusing, and often stressful experience to manage. The research conducted explored the complexity that exists specifically for young adults navigating healthcare independently for the first time. After analyzing qualitative and quantitative data from 45 interviews, I created and facilitated two UX design workshops to ideate opportunities and solutions informed by the generative research findings. The final project is a multi-modal presentation that mixes storyboarding, user interface designs, and interactive research readouts that allow stakeholders to truly immerse themselves in the research and experience. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Madeline Fillip | Poster | Portfolio | Digitization of the Mission Espiritu Santo Collection | Texas Archeological Research Laboratory | The Mission Espiritu Santo Collection (state site number 41GD1) both an archival and artifact collection from this third location of the Mission in the town of Goliad, Texas. The archival materials contain photographs of artifacts, a complete survey report from the 1933 A.T. Jackson excavation, the Human Osteology Project, and a daily journal from R.E. Beard. These materials are held at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory. The materials in this collection help to illuminate what daily life was like for the Spanish and native inhabitants living in the Mission Espiritu Santo three centuries ago. I am digitizing the collection by scanning the documents and creating a workflow for performing inventory on them in order to make them accessible off-site to a wider academic audience. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Madeline Goebel | Poster | Portfolio | Texas After Violence Project Content Migration | Texas After Violence Project | Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) is a community-based archive that records, preserves, and provides access to oral history interviews that document experiences with state and interpersonal violence. For my capstone, I migrated about one hundred interviews to Mukurtu Content Management System. This required setting up the structure of the Mukurtu instance, establishing controlled vocabularies for descriptive metadata, implementing the controlled vocabularies by standardizing and creating new metadata, ingesting the interviews and metadata, and writing documentation for the organization. My project enhances the discoverability of the materials in TAVPs collection, allowing users to more easily find what they need. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Aastha Goyal | Poster | Portfolio | IT contract procurement and monitoring | Texas Department of Information Resources | I worked with the Texas Department of Information Resources to develop customized solutions for performing automated checks, data retrieval, and management to support ongoing IT contract procurement and monitoring activities. I worked on 2 projects Texas SmartBuy Dashboard and Vendor Checks. SmartBuy Dashboard: Extract data from Excel worksheets and analyze it to find the status of Texas SmartBuy Memberships for the State of Texas Department of Information Resources (the D.I.R.).Vendor Checks: Create an automated process to complete and store the results of the checks on Vendors using Web Scrapping and browser automation. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Amanda Hildebrand | Portfolio | Constituent Resource Management (CRM) for the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE) | Texas Grants Resource Center (TGRC) and UT Austin Center for Community Engagement (CCE) | The goal of this project with the Texas Grants Resource Center and the Center for Community Engagement of the University of Texas at Austin was to assess the current Constituent Resource Management system of both departments and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement as a whole, and to provide recommendations for the purchase of a CRM platform based on data collection and management needs identified through that assessment. As outward-facing programs that serve the UT, Austin, and Central Texas communities, efficient and streamlined data management using a CRM with features that best meets the needs of all departments will maximize the reach and measure the impact of DDCE programs and services. This project aims to start the conversation across DDCE departments about how to continue to connect the Division to UTs students, faculty, and community members and measure the impact of these constituents interactions with UTs service-oriented programs. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yiyan Huang | Poster | Portfolio | Improving the Experience of Family Caregivers for Adolescents with ADHD | Athenahealth | Theres an estimation of 53 million caregivers that provided unpaid care to family members in 2020 in U.S. Study shows about 22% of them felt unable to handle all their caregiving responsibilities. This project will explore how to improve family caregivers' experience for adolescents with ADHD in using athenahealth patient portals. It carries qualitative research on the pain points that potential users had, with a background study on competitors, archival analyses of users' pain points online, ideate solutions to help solve the problems for family caregivers especially those from a less advantageous background, and iterate prototypes to showcase design solutions. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Max James | Poster | Portfolio | Unearthing Texas' Digital Archeology Records | Texas Archeological Research Laboratory | The overarching goal of my capstone project is to facilitate access to files currently stored on a collection of approximately 200 floppy discs for the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL). To that end, I have developed a multi-step workflow starting with converting data from the floppy discs into .e01 disc image files using BitCurator. Disc image files are subsequently scanned through Autopsys digital forensics platform which generates human-readable text that can be transferred into a modern Excel spreadsheet. Disc image files, their associated digital forensics reports, and the reformatted data are then uploaded to a shared UTBox folder along with institutional metadata. The overall outcome of the endeavor has been providing TARL with accurately reformatted files that are accessible with modern software while also retaining all of the original data for their repository. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Florian Janke | Poster | Portfolio | Using Machine Learning of Demographics and Clinical History to Predict Suicide Outcomes | Dell Medical School | According to the CDC, there were 47,511 suicide deaths in the US in 2019 alone. This excludes suicide attempts and cases not reported as suicide due to social stigma. Predicting who attempts or commits suicide is challenging, but recent advances in machine learning may allow for improvements. In this project, mood disorder and related clinical features were extracted from free-text descriptions to predict suicide mortality. Using these features and demographic data on deceased individuals collected by the National Institute of Mental Health, a machine learning model was trained to predict suicide/non-suicide outcome with a weighted F-1 score of ~84%. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Marisa Jefferson | Poster | Portfolio | Amplifying Women's Voices in the Archives | Briscoe Center for American History | In order to draw attention to womens histories and stories at the Briscoe Center for American History, I reviewed the finding aids for more than 350 collections containing materials created by women. I focused on a small subset of these collections and I took a multi-method approach to making their materials more findable. My work included writing and editing finding aids to highlight womens lives and contributions, as well as digitizing materials created by women. I also transcribed the 284-page diary of Frances Cox Henderson in order to create a searchable document that would be more accessible for future researchers. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Shravya Kolavara | Poster | Portfolio | Enhancing the Experience of Kamanas Healthcare Staffing Software | Kamana | Kamana simplifies credential and talent management in the healthcare field by providing software solutions for staffing agencies, nurses and allied health professionals. The project contributes to the design strategy of Kamanas B2B product by crafting conceptual designs based on critical thinking and an analysis of the research. The insights are gained from evaluating the existing product along with their competitors, constructing experience and customer journey maps, and an exploration of quantitative data (from surveys and product-analytics). The final contribution to the strategy involves exploring and modifying existing information architecture through site maps, and designing high-fidelity mockups of these concepts in order to validate them with users. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Natalia Kovalyova | Poster | Portfolio | Seeking Justice under Archival Erasure | School of Information | This project explores the role of records, recordkeeping and archiving in the legal arguments of Cobell v Salazar a largest class-action lawsuit in the U.S. history. Through close reading and critical discourse analysis of deposition statements, Congressional hearings, witness statements, and legal opinions in this case, it traces the summoning of financial records as evidence of governments performance of its duties and as evidence of its failure to do so. The findings lead to a formulation of several propositions on the co-evolution of governing, record-keeping, and the struggle for social justice. | Spring 2021 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Ayu Larasati | Portfolio | A Usability Study on Athenahealths Billing System | Athenahealth | Athenahealth's QuickPay payment experience allows consumers to view and pay their medical bills online using a unique access code that they receive in their paper statement. This payment experience has recently undergone an update and redesign process, and in order to gauge the effectiveness of the new design, heuristic evaluations and usability testing was conducted on the beta version of the redesigned prototype. Overall, although the proposed redesigned prototype has some cosmetic issues that need to be addressed, the results found the new prototype design highly usable, and recommendations for next-steps are given based on the outcome of the testing. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sashank Macharla | Poster | Portfolio | Inclusive Healthcare: Understanding the invisible barriers in the American Healthcare System | Athenahealth | The project is a generative research study that delves into individual user choices around their healthcare decisions, and the factors that affect them. There exist barriers in healthcare that influence user decisions - particularly users from diverse populations. One of them is the Social Determinants of Health: socio-economic factors that affect an individuals access and engagement with healthcare. Through moderated and unmoderated interviews, this research study attempts to find user pain points, motivations, biases, and potential solutions to bring awareness about this into the organization, and promote critical thinking when building a more inclusive healthcare service platform. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Christopher McCluney | Poster | Portfolio | Scan with a Plan: The Creation and Standardizion of Digitization Manuals for the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | As a bastion of preservation and access to archival collections, The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History engages with digitization efforts on a frequent basis. Despite this, current guides for digitization efforts act primarily as an appeal for digitization practices and their importance. Furthermore, written over a period of eleven years and by various staff, the existing guides each feature varied scope, purpose, and diction. This project will create a central page within the centers Wiki which hosts accessible and easily understandable guides for station and equipment setup, material handling, and digitization workflows within multiple media formats. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Anne Morgan | Poster | Portfolio | Documenting Records Management at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics | University of Texas Institute for Geophysics | The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) is a research unit in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior records management workflows at UTIG were developed by Brady Cox. I worked with UTIG to digitize personnel files, organize digitized personnel files in Box, update existing workflows, and produce new, detailed workflows in order to improve documentation of the records management process. This process is an important part of initial hire and end of employment at UTIG. Deliverables included a set of detailed workflows, a one-page summary of the detailed workflows, and organized and digitized personnel files stored in Box. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Colin Morgan | Poster | Portfolio | Digitizing Audio Collections at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory | Texas Archeological Research Laboratory | I worked with the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) to digitize their oral history and conference recording collections. With the assistance of the School of Information, I ran mass digitization at the departments Information Technology laboratory to create preservation-quality masters and access copies of the 66 audio cassettes in TARLs collection. Along with digitizing the audio, I also performed maintenance work on the physical cassette materials. After producing the access copies, I created time-stamped transcripts, formatting them to allow them to be both readable to researchers and usable as subtitles for the audio files in a digital asset management system. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Gillian Morton | Poster | Portfolio | Legacy Metadata Mapping for the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | The objective of this professional experience project was to develop metadata mapping for the Briscoe Center to migrate its legacy metadata from Dublin Core (DC) and Metadata Object Description Shema (MODS) metadata standards to Resource Description Framework (RDF) for its eventual incorporation into Islandora 8, a digital repository system. To develop my mapping recommendations, I researched the DC to MODS mapping created by my supervisor, Olivia Solis, and the MODS to RDF Mapping Recommendations document created by the Samvera MODS to RDF Working Group. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Amir Mostafavi | Poster | Portfolio | Resume Reviewer Dashboard Design and Development | Revify, LLC | Revify helps software engineers land their dream jobs by making it seamless to request a resume/portfolio review from an employee of their dream company. As a resume review platform, its important for Revify to make this process efficient for both parties, the reviewee and the reviewer. Previously, this service was in a proof of concept stage and was using Google Drive as its dashboard for resume reviewers. However, the limitations and constraints posed by Google Drive had made it cumbersome for reviewers to swiftly and efficiently review resumes assigned to them. In this project I tackled design and development of a dashboard for reviewers to provide an efficient and pleasurable experience to those who are willing to give their time and review job seekers resumes and help them navigate the job search process in a more frictionless manner. The design and development process employs best practices from UX design to software development and implementation. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Meg Patton | Poster | Portfolio | Dell Developer Portal: Competitive Usability Evaluation of API Documentation Sites | Dell Technologies | This research project explored 8 existing API documentation sites and their respective task completion rates, satisfaction scores, and likes/dislikes from 6 different user personas in order to drive the user experience requirements for the creation of a new developer portal for Dell Technologies. The research consisted of 2-hour one-on-one interview sessions with 17 participants, during which quantitative and qualitative data were collected. This data was then analyzed and a final report and presentation were delivered to the stakeholder team in order to inform the design process of the new site. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Huanran Peng | Poster | Portfolio | Chatbot design for parents who are suffering from Postpartum Depression | Institute for Media Innovation | The project is designing a chatbot for parents who are suffering from Postpartum Depression. We conducted the research related to mental health support tools and compared the existing application in the market. According to the data from Postpartum Depression Support International, we defined the typical working flow of the volunteers to respond to the parents. We collaboratively worked with another team that is focusing on creating an NLP model to integrate into the chatbot system. The final deliverable is a typical conversational flow to provide the parents with some resources based on their needs and preparing the prototype for user testing in the next stage. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Somnath Rakshit | Poster | Portfolio | A GPU-accelerated MRI Sequence Simulation for Differentiable Optimization and Learning | The University of Texas Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering | The Extended Phase Graph (EPG) Algorithm is a powerful tool for MRI sequence simulation and quantitative fitting, but such simulators are mostly written to run on CPU only and (with some exception) are poorly parallelized. A parallelized simulator compatible with other learning-based frameworks would be a useful tool to optimize scan parameters. Thus, we created an open source, GPU-accelerated EPG simulator in PyTorch. Since the simulator is fully differentiable by means of automatic differentiation, it canbe used to take derivatives with respect to sequence parameters, e.g. flip angles, as well as tissue parameters, e.g. T1 and T2. | Spring 2021 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Janani Ravikumar | Poster | Portfolio | Nature Rx: Mapping Outdoor Spaces Across the University Campus to Promote Mental Health and Wellness | Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center | Nature Rx is a program that promotes spending time outdoors as a means of improving one's overall mental and physical health. In collaboration with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the Counseling and Mental Health Center, and the Longhorn Wellness Center, my goal for this project was to collect data on various outdoor spaces across UTs campus and build a prototype of a story map visualizing these spaces, as well as providing additional information on the benefits associated with each and their accessibility. The story map will eventually be featured on the Longhorn Wellness Centers website. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Chloe Reshetar-Jost | Poster | Portfolio | Adapting the Patient Healthcare Portal for Postpartum Users | athenahealth | Informed by the current direction of Consumer Health at athenahealth, I adapted the patient-facing healthcare portal to become sensitive to the needs of postpartum mothers. Through user and design research, I learned about the pain points in the current experience and identified areas that needed to be addressed. I brought these insights into UX design and prototyping, focusing on solutions that expand on the existing portal framework and make it easier for mothers to address their mental health, find relevant and reliable information, and manage healthcare for their family. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Coral Roper | Poster | Portfolio | A Good Book is Good Medicine | Dell Children's Family Resource Center Library | My project was to assist the Dell Childrens Family Resource Center Library in formulating a suitable collection of books that were specifically for the purpose of bibliotherapy. To understand the concept more thoroughly I did some research on bibliotherapy and how hospitals have used it in the past, identifying its effectiveness on patients, and completed an additional PowerPoint presentation for the hospital staff on the topic.To form the collection, I looked at a list of books already owned by the library and some of the common topics that were researched by patients, and then looked online for novels whose subject matter was specifically related to the ailments listed. After I found them, I placed them in an Amazon book list created by Darlene Ennis, the director of the center. I also made a list of them categorized by the physical or mental illness discussed within, and shared it with Ms. Ennis on Google Drive. After the list was completed, we discussed ways to indicate that they were related to bibliotherapy, and our ultimate decision was to have them marked with a sticker, possibly one that looks like a row of books and has Healing written on it.The outcome of all this was that I successfully created a list of new books for the library to add to their shelves that would hopefully help patients coping with specific types of ailments. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Gabrielle Roth | Poster | Portfolio | Processing and Digitization: WPA's Morhiss Mound (41VT1) Primary Documents | Texas Archeological Research Laboratory | The Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at the University of Texas at Austin, an unconventional archive, is a nationally recognized archeological research facility and the largest in the state of Texas. Their mission is to collect preserve, and curate archeological specimens and records, train students, conduct archeological research, and disseminate information about Texas archeological legacy. From 1932 to 1939 the Works Project Administration completed site excavations of the Morhiss Mound (41VT1) site in Victoria County, Texas. The primary documents of these excavations, stewarded by TARL and including over 8 linear feet of text documents, photographic prints, nitrate and glass negatives, and maps, were inventoried, organized, treated with preservation techniques, and digitized to ensure the greater preservation of sensitive record formats and allow TARL to provide more expedient and complete access of site records to students and qualified researchers. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Rupali Roy | Poster | Portfolio | Exploring Data Segmentation and Donation Giving Behaviors | UT Development - Reporting, Analytics and Data | The main aim of the project was to build a machine learning model to predict if a person donates to the university or not. The prediction model uses the demographic information, professional information, educational qualification, and prior donation details as input features. The project flow includes tasks like data collection and cleaning, exploratory data analysis, selecting appropriate algorithms, training the model, and getting accurate predictions. I was able to develop a binary classification model using XGB Classifier with an ROC-AUC score of 0.92. The initial analysis was focused on understanding the demographics of people who donated continuously from 2015-2020. The analysis and the results should help the RAD team to understand the circumstances under which a prospect will donate, the relationship between giving amount and ask amount. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Amberly Russell | Poster | Portfolio | Rural Public Library Communications: Branding and Pandemic-Centric Strategies | Tye Preston Memorial Library | Rural public libraries have unique communications challenges during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. This capstone project was done at Tye Preston Memorial Library in Canyon Lake, Texas with a population of 25,325. This project focused on branding the entire organization by first creating a brand style guide to streamline and create consistency in their digital media message. Next steps included designing social media guidelines and best practices, newsletter recommendations, website enhancements, and a flex library programming strategy. Methodologies were based on qualitative library staff research, library communications literature review, and my professional knowledge of Canyon Lake-specific marketing techniques. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Biswajit Saha | Poster | Portfolio | GraphQL based UI/UX web service for Services AI Graph Research, Dell Technologies | Dell Technologies | In support of Dells Data Management research program, the Services AI Research team has determined that UI/UX needs to be foundational to the Architecture of all new Graph data systems. The objective of this project is to create and research front-end web service UIs that enable any user to experience and interact with diverse data and machine intelligence systems in a symbiotic and native way. The end goal is to create a front-end Web Services UI that delivers a UX that allows users to natively interact through GraphQL queries to Dell data integrated into our Graph Management Project. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Aylin Saribudak | Poster | Portfolio | Research, Design, Repeat: Creating a Delightful Website for the BrightLeaf Group | BrightLeaf Group | My project goal was to create a modern and engaging website for the BrightLeaf Group that enables their clients to easily understand the companys brand identity, expertise, and impact. With guidance from the BrightLeaf Groups leadership, I utilized both UX Research and Design methodologies. First, I reviewed the existing site, interviewed stakeholders, and studied competitors sites. Next, I created an information architecture and a low-fidelity prototype, which I tested and refined. Ultimately, I generated a high-fidelity prototype that I tested and handed off to the BrightLeaf Group for further visual design work and implementation. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Beth Sarno | Poster | Portfolio | Knowledge Management: Increasing Insight Value for a UX Team | School of Information, UT Austin | UX research is valuable. However, the artifacts, analysis and insights that shape innovation are sometimes lost after a project is completed. This can lead to redundant research or under-utilized reports, which is costly. Repositories and formalized structures for data are therefore important, but the return on investment is sometimes hard to see and hard to sell. My project focused on a small UX research department at an Austin agency. Joining a team that was learning and using a complex UX research method (called Jobs-to-be-done), I used participant observation, journey and ecosystem mapping plus stakeholder interviews to find pain points, learning obstacles and opportunities in their data organization process. Then, referencing theories like the Diffusion of Innovation, I considered the benefits of certain changes and the risks of inaction. Creating a final questionnaire for the team, I had them score pain points based on their role and was able to provide prioritized recommendations for next steps with this data. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Elizabeth Seeley | Poster | Portfolio | Extracting and Migrating Legacy Metadata for Bexar Archives Online | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | Bexar Archives Online is an online repository of digitized colonial records, and their translations, documenting Spanish and Mexican Texas between 1717 and 1836. The Bexar Archives, which contain roughly 300,000 pages, have been managed and preserved by the University of Texas for over a century. In preparation for the implementation of a new content hosting system, I developed a Proof of Concept and project workflow to extract, generate, and structure metadata for the digitized originals and translations using legacy reference materials. I also created and compiled comprehensive documentation on the history of the project and the collection, outstanding issues and potential solutions, and recommendations for broader policies and procedures regarding translation practices. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Constanza Serna | Poster | Portfolio | Curating Book Joy in the Time of Quarantine: A School Librarys Response to Covid-19 | Barbara Jordan ECPS - Austin Independent School District | For students, parents, and teachers alike, the 2020-2021 school year has been a source of overwhelming challenges. Many students still lack access to the meaningful services offered by both school and public libraries. The objective of this project is to provide literature-based experiences for students and their families through the curation of four Covid-safe school library events at Barbara Jordan Elementary. The Second Thursday Bedtime Story, Books Are Poppin Book Drive, Barbaras Bookshelf Parent Workshop, and the Reading is Dino-Mite Scholastic Book Fair strive to strengthen the school to home connection while making books and reading an authentic source of joy in a time of uncertainty. | Spring 2021 | School Library Practicum |
| Amy Simpson | Poster | Portfolio | An Onboarding Experience Designed with Actionable Data | Permanent Legacy Foundation | This project addresses a common problem in the startup world: retaining new users. Users come, they create an account, and then they never return. Such was the case with Permanent Legacy Foundation. They wanted to change this pattern and make the usage of their website follow their user growth. I met with the Permanent team weekly, and we decided the best way to address their problem was to design and introduce a user onboarding experience. To make that user experience as successful as possible, I developed a research plan to gather data that would drive the design. Ultimately, the onboarding plan was iterated several times to reflect the data, and recommendations were made to Permanent for changes beyond the onboarding experience to address deeper issues. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Raivynn Smith | Poster | Portfolio | Reading the Rainbow: Evaluating the Collection of the Gender and Sexuality Centers Ana Sisnett Library | The Gender and Sexuality Center at the University of Texas at Austin | The Gender and Sexuality Center is home to the Ana Sisnett Library and has a large collection of books, magazines, zines, and DVDs. The goal of this project was to evaluate the current selection, cataloging and deselection methods of the library, and recommended practices that streamline collection processes and increase the librarys ability to meet the needs of its patrons. Through research, meetings with stakeholders and focus groups I was able to create a short and long term collection development plan. I also performed cataloging updates and created a new primer focusing on disabilities in the LGBTQ+ community. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Brianna Stedman | Poster | Portfolio | Automating Monthly Partner Billing Data | Bellhop | This project involved re-regulating Bellhop's operating practices for capturing specific financial data about corporate partners, aligning multiple teams on the source of the data, and querying the company database to execute a single Tableau workbook that standardized the multiple files each separate team was using previously. Creating a single source of truth for financial data gives more transparency into partner-related expenses, and also decreased the work time of multiple teams each month during the billing cycle. The workbook is also structured to be flexible to adjust with the companys rapidly-shifting processes and initiatives in the future. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Chieh-An (Ann) Tsai | Poster | Portfolio | Digitizing Health Record Data Management System in Post-Acute Healthcare Company | WellSky | This project aims at digitizing the health record data management system for stakeholders of healthcare agencies to track and collect incidents from high-risk patients. The existing solution relies on hand-written paper forms, which makes it infeasible for future data analysis. To tackle the problem, we utilize user experience design process to improve the system. Specifically, we adopt the double diamond design process to discover three pain points, then we provide three corresponding solutions to form our final product. The prototype succeeded the user concept testing and is adopted for product development. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Kaitlyn Tuck | Poster | Portfolio | The Kreische Brewery State Historic Site Collections: An Evaluation of Collection Scope and Condition Assessment | Texas Historical Commission | The Kreische Brewery (located in LaGrange) was one of the first commercial breweries in Texas. Founded by a German immigrant and stonemason, Heinrich Ludwig Kreische, and his family in the 1860s, the ruins of the grounds, consisting of the brewery and the Kreische family home, are now an historic site under the purview of the Historic Sites Division of the Texas Historical Commission (THC). The Kreische Brewery State Historic Site Collections include around 375 historical objects and approximately 19 linear feet of records stored at the THCs Curatorial Facility for Archival Research (CFAR) in Austin and around 1,200 objects at the historical site itself. The collections have changed hands four different times, so THCs staff would like to gain intellectual and physical control of their collection. I assisted in this process by performing a collection inventory and assessment, which includes recommendations for future preservation, use, and outreach. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Emily Vernon | Poster | Portfolio | Open Access Engagement: A Look Into the Repositories Hosted by the Texas Digital Library | Texas Digital Library | Establishing, maintaining, and growing institutional digital repositories is yet another effort librarians make to ensure greater material access and availability. The Texas Digital Library (TDL) hosts such repositories for over 20 member institutions across the state and consistently seeks ways to encourage use of the associated materials. This capstone project was conducted in an effort to understand university-wide use and understanding of institutional repositories, which elucidates patterns of involvement with materials created by each institutions surrounding community and associated ontologies of open access. Interviews were conducted with TDLs member institutions to gain greater insight into how these tools are used across higher education, as well as to provide recommendations geared toward facilitating greater use and engagement with the materials housed within the repositories. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Aoshen Wan | Poster | Portfolio | COVID-19 Portal: Profiling Researchers, Bio-entities, and Institutions | the University of Texas at Austin | COVID-19 portal displays the research profiles of scientists, bio entities (e.g., gene, drug, disease), and institutions based on the integration of CORD-19 research literature, COVID-19 related clinical trials, PubMed knowledge graph, and the drug discovery knowledge graph. This portal provides the following profiles related to COVID-19: 1) the profile of a research scientist with his/her COVID-19 related publications and clinical trials 2) the profile of a bio entity which could be a gene, a drug, or a disease with articles and clinical trials mentioned this bio entity; and 3) the profile of an institution with papers authored by researchers. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jiaxuan Wang | Poster | Portfolio | Redesigning the Agenda View for Athena Scheduling Product | Athenahealth | The project is to redesign the agenda view for Athena Scheduling Product to provide a better user experience for multiple roles including the front desk, providers and practice managers, who all have unique needs and wants. This redesign also aims to improve the flexibility of the appointment card to contain additional features coming along with COVID-19. The final outcomes will be high-fidelity prototypes of the agenda view displayed on the home page and a skim version to allow providers to put up their schedule aside for quick check. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Xuan Wang | Poster | Portfolio | Vendor Check Automation | Texas Department of Information Resources and School of Information | This project aims to complete vendor checks and store the results as openable documents for the DIR contract managers. It is a python-based program that involves web scraping, database query, and auto-creation of documents. Vendor account information is fetched from Salesforce by using a REST API. This program is primarily for contract managers to perform pipelined checks on a specific vendor. The contract manager only needs to provide the vendor's name or id, and the program will automatically execute all the checks in sequence. The checks include Franchise Tax Status check, HUB Status check, Vendor Performance check, and etc. The output files will be saved on the users laptop. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Lindsay Wendlandt | Poster | Portfolio | Dell Medical School LibGuide: Creating and Developing the Graduate Medical Residency Resources Section | Dell Medical School Library | My project involved creating and developing the Medical Residency Resources section of the Dell Medical School LibGuide. To start, I explored other medical LibGuides and distributed a survey to the Schools medical residents for input. I then added general information, associations and search help to the Resources section. I then created a separate Mobile Apps section on the LibGuide. The majority of my project was creating sub-sections for five of the Schools residency programs. For each residency program, I created a selection of databases, journals, books, clinical guidelines and associations and societies specific and relevant to each residency. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yang Yuan | Poster | Portfolio | Medical Dashboard Development and Visualization for Critical Care Data | Dell Medical School | The project aims to design and develop a dashboard of the MIMIC-iii dataset for doctors. With the guidance of my supervisors from Dell Medical School, I developed a dashboard application using Cube.js and designed visualization of the MIMIC-iii demo dataset. The application consists of a playground where doctors can try out different graphs with easy drag-and-drop operations, a demo data visualization of various graphs focusing on Sepsis, and a user account system providing a customized dashboard for each account. In conclusion, this is a medical data dashboard application of the doctors, by the doctors, and for the doctors. | Spring 2021 | Professional Experience Project |
| Lindsey Zeiler | Poster | Portfolio | Building a Collection for Early Transitioning Readers | Summitt Elementary School | For my capstone project, a school librarian and I built a collection in an elementary school for young readers whos reading level falls between early reader and chapter books. Through creating a list of early chapter book series through Follet Tidal Wave, we built a list of books that are inclusive, diverse, and that fit the appropriate reading level. Through applying to a grant that was created by the PTA association, we received $1,000 that went towards books and storage space. The project represents efforts to include new and diverse books that are available to students who are emerging readers. | Spring 2021 | School Library Practicum |
| Bree'ya Brown | Poster | Portfolio | The Peculiarities of Community Archives: Exploring the Documentation of History and Memory through Digital Archives and Social Media. | School of Information | This work introduces community-based archives in the United States that practice archivist activism through the use of digital archives and social media to an academic and public audience. The archives presented in this study reveal successful efforts of archivists who engage with and record the stories of underrepresented and historically marginalized communities. In hopes of understanding the profound importance of community-based archives to the archival field and the field of history, this work presents an analysis on three community-based archives: ATX Barrio Archive, the Black Lesbian Archives, and the Texas After Violence Project. | Fall 2020 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Jackie Dillon | Poster | Portfolio | Elevating Instructional Design by Incorporating Design Thinking Principles | School of Information | Instructional design, a field of theory and practice established within education and corporate education training, is shifting in today's modern technological world. Once only focused on the content of the established curriculum and the traditional (paper, pencil) ways of presenting that information, now, instructional designers are faced with the challenge of leading the way for innovative e-learning training and solutions using the latest technology trends and tools. In this report, I will examine current instructional design models and their approaches, then compare the models to the design process of Design Thinking. This report will showcase the belief that utilizing the Design Thinking mindset within the established instructional design models will elevate the instructional design field and current learning solutions, therefore allowing for the instructional design field to continue to grow. | Fall 2020 | Master's Report/Thesis |
| Andrew Elkin | Poster | Portfolio | Multiplayer Virtual Reality Space Simulation | Inchoate Elk LLC | A multi-platform, multiplayer, virtual reality space simulator with detailed physics and realistic scale created in Unreal Engine. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Imani Evans | Poster | Portfolio | Social Network Analysis for Foundations: the Case of the Hogg Foundation | Hogg Foundation for Mental Health | The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health is invested in data visualization as a way to further understand the impact of its grantmaking and to identify misalignment, if any, between the foundation's work and its stated goals and values. My Professional Experience Project is a structured exploration of a particular visualization approach, social network analysis (SNA), considered for its potential to yield useful insights into these key questions. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Nora Green | Poster | Portfolio | Labeling Systems Feature Redesign | Khoros | The Community product currently has four separate features that function as labeling systems: Labels, Tags, Product Mentions, and Custom Tags. After reviewing ~8 years of user suggestions and complaints, completing a systems review, collecting data via sampling, and producing a competitive analysis, 5 themes for issues to be improved were determined. This resulted in 5 goals for redesigning the Labels and Tags features into a single feature. Approximately 34 wireframes were created to map out the proposed design, comprising the functions available from the content page, admin backend, and user profile. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Laura Grove | Poster | Portfolio | Developing a Repository-Specific Processing and Training Manual | The Catholic Archives of Texas | The Catholic Archives of Texas (CAT) is a unique, state-wide repository for the Texas Catholic community. Operating since 1923, the repository has no processing or training protocols in place. As such, this project focused on developing these policies and implementing a workflow. Because CAT is a unique archive, training and processing manuals were compiled and consulted from a variety of repositories, both religious and secular. Additionally, repository-specific needs and Catholic requirements were thoroughly investigated. The final product is a detailed processing and training manual designed to be accessible to both trained archival professionals and the average untrained volunteer. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Vanessa Hutchins | Poster | Portfolio | A Digital Collection: Santa Anna in Life and Legend | LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collection | The Benson Latin American Collection holds the memoirs of Mexican politician Antonio López de Santa Anna. It also holds abundant primary sources that add voices to his account of Mexico's history. I curated a digital collection of 40 documents related to the era of Santa Anna's revolutions, and generated their item-level metadata in MODS. With this dataset I designed a viewer-centered Spotlight exhibit aimed at high school students, presenting archives as a springboard for understanding Mexico's first independent decades. Using ArcGIS and MapWarper, I georeferenced archival maps, photographs, and manuscripts to build an interactive exhibit component that invites temporal-geospatial analysis. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Regis Junearick | Poster | Portfolio | Faculty Innovation Center - The Usability of Data | Faculty Innovation Center | Data Visualization Dashboards are increasingly common across academic and professional domains. As dashboards near ubiquity, a challenge to face is not only how effectively they present their stories, but how a website or online repository can display them to the best effect. I worked with the Faculty Innovation Center to discover and implement means of displaying dashboards, through UX/UI Design and Front-End Web Development. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Mavis Klemcke | Poster | Portfolio | School Libraries during a global pandemic | Williams Elementary | School Libraries and Covid19 : Adapting a school library program to meet its community's demands and needs during a global pandemic. For this project, I planned, designed, and implemented ideas and processes to adapt library practices and procedures to ensure relevancy, use, and support for students and teachers. The first project, "Bilingual Curbside Pickup," created a way for students and families to have a contactless process for checking out and returning books. Other projects included instructive lessons on new technology and administering new practices that foster a love of reading and learning while providing materials in the safest way possible. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Stormie Koerner | Poster | Portfolio | Improving and Updating the Dell Medical School Libguide: The Importance of Maintaining a Standardized Resource Guide | Dell Medical School Library | My capstone project involved improving, updating, and standardizing the Dell Medical School Libguide. To accomplish these tasks, I performed an initial assessment of the Libguide and circulated a user feedback survey to students at Dell Med. Throughout the Libguide, I updated resource links and standardized font types. I created new versions of the Databases, Health Statistics, and Medical Writing Resources sections, and added a glossary of key terms for writing medical literature. I tracked all of my changes and updates in a master excel spreadsheet, and also wrote an organizational guidelines document to assist with future updates to the Libguide. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Morgan Ladd | Poster | Portfolio | The Flexibility of School Libraries Amidst a Pandemic | Steiner Ranch Elementary School and Four Points Middle School | I completed my School Library Practicum at Steiner Ranch Elementary School and Four Points Middle School in the Leander Independent School District. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the experience of the school libraries was modified in many ways. I adapted my lessons to adhere to social distancing guidelines, and I observed the modification of library procedures to protect the health of students and faculty. Each school library implemented curbside checkout services to provide equitable access to books for all students. My focus this semester was promoting the libraries through social media and expanding the collection to encourage students to continue reading. | Fall 2020 | School Library Practicum |
| Tina Lassiter | Poster | Portfolio | Ethics in the Technology Sector | KUNGFU.AI | My project focuses on how technology companies can implement ethics in their work. Over several months, I observed how KUNGFU.AI ensures that it is acting ethically. I attended weekly ethics discussions, analyzed their ethics Slack channel, and interviewed team-members. Through a survey with over 65 other tech companies, I learned more about various approaches and opinions concerning ethics in the tech world. My research allowed me to create a database for the company, introduce an online tool designed by AI-Global that provides ethical scores and reports for projects, and inform my company about other possible ideas for the future. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Oliver Lu | Poster | Portfolio | Personal Art Collections Database | Mirih Arts Co., Ltd. | Input 94 artworks into a database for personal art collections inventory management. The goal of this project is to help an art collector manage his/her own collections with a database. To decide what metadata to be used, I refer to the auction catalogs, Websites, exhibitions, galleries, and interviews with artists and collectors. For those easy-to-recognize artworks, the data comes from the art-related Websites and databases, if searchable. On the contrary, the information relies on the collector's memory or notes as hints. Beyond the artworks' data, I add available trading records into the database as well. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Mona Sachdev | Poster | Portfolio | Bio-Entity Extraction of COVID-19 Literature | AI-Health Lab, UT-iSchool | In light of the worldwide pandemic, COVID-19 Portal sums up COVID-19 related research endeavors from more than 200,000 research papers which can encourage researchers to cooperate and share resources. The objective of my project is bio-entity extraction for COVID-19 papers using tools like PubTator and BERN, neural named entity recognition tools for biomedical text mining, and entity extraction. The dataset obtained from open source platforms like PubMed and Kaggle is processed by extracting biological entities, authors, and identifying affiliations. Simultaneously, extracting the current most mentioned biological entities (e.g., drugs, diseases, vaccines, genes) in clinical trials and the lists of most active scientists, institutions, and the topics or biological entities they are working on. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Rachel Walfoort | Poster | Portfolio | Bureau of Economic Geology Collection Summaries | Bureau of Economic Geology | The Resource Center at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at The University of Texas at Austin collects, organizes, preserves, and makes available the records produced by the BEG. For my capstone, I reviewed the databases for the three primary collections: the Open File Reports, the Open Data Storage, and the Map Room. Using the metadata from these databases, I wrote a mission statement for the Resource Center and summaries of each collection. The mission statement and summaries can be posted on the BEG website to increase visibility of the collections. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Fangjiang Wu | Poster | Portfolio | New Student Services Database Project | UT Divsion of Student Affairs | New Students Service department conducts a web portal, which provides newcomers and future students with orientations and comprehensive information of UT. In this capstone project, my main goal is to assist improving the database of New Student Services orientation system. I initially provide an analysis of current issues. Then, I modify registrants-related database tables and provide a proposed Entity Relationship Diagrams. I also help administers improve their efficiency accessing data by associating their notes with students' logs. Furthermore, I am involved in improving email notification auto-sending part in system, where I assist modifying back end codes and relevant database tables. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Jiaron Yang | Poster | Portfolio | Optimizing User Experience of COVID-19 Portal | AI-Health Lab, UT-iSchool | In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, AI health Lab has prepared the COVID-19 Portal. COVID-19 Portal is a resource of over 2,000,000 research papers about COVID-19, bio-entities, and related fields. Based on open-source datasets like PubMed and Kaggle, COVID-19 Portal is aimed to provide the global research community with a quick query on the COVID-19 paper collections related to any bio-entities, institutions, and authors for the ongoing fight against this infectious disease. Since there are tons of COVID datasets and analytic web, creating a differentiated product with high usability is the designer's primary challenge in the early stage. As the UX designer, I utilized UX methodologies to define the market gap and users' needs, identified product positioning, and prototyped the landing page of COVID-19 Portal. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Yiping Zhou | Poster | Portfolio | Work Order for Warehouse Management System | A warehouse management system (For Warehouse Users) is a system that helps manage the day-to-day operations in a warehouse which may be connected to Order Management System(For Warehouse Users' customers). It controls the receiving, put-away, delivery, and maintenance of the inventory. Work Order is a critical function for maintenance which is responsible for operating businesses that can't be simply categorized under one function, such as the repair of products and the replacement of product labels. Overall, Work Order needs to be considered with the Order, Outbound, Inbound, and Return on the product design details and design requirements. | Fall 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Harika Bommu | Portfolio | Optimizing Product Classification for a "Back-of-Store" Management | Smarter Sorting | Making the existing Classification Portal actionable and constantly reinforce the value that Smarter Sorting is adding to the users' (retailers' & suppliers') business. Defining what is noise and what is essential to be seen on the dashboard and how the filters might act in edge cases all while thinking about how it might affect Smarter Sorting's business. The solution being a dashboard that can help with providing real time insights through custom reporting. Making a seamless supplier-retailer communication for quick and accurate classification information. Providing essential metrics that can potentially elevate Smarter Sorting business. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Harika Bommu | Portfolio | Optimizing Product Classification for a "Back-of-Store" Management | Smarter Sorting | Making the existing Classification Portal actionable and constantly reinforce the value that Smarter Sorting is adding to the users' (retailers' & suppliers') business. Defining what is noise and what is essential to be seen on the dashboard and how the filters might act in edge cases all while thinking about how it might affect Smarter Sorting's business. The solution being a dashboard that can help with providing real time insights through custom reporting. Making a seamless supplier-retailer communication for quick and accurate classification information. Providing essential metrics that can potentially elevate Smarter Sorting business. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Alison Brislin | Portfolio | Alternative Access Points for the Alexander Architectural Archives | Alexander Architectural Archives | I worked with the Alexander Architectural Archives to identify a project which would be useful for research during and post the COVID-19 crisis. We decided it prudent to create alternative access points to further discoverability and scholarship when physical objects are unavailable. Prior to shelter-in-place, I had processed and created a finding aid for the Lang and Witchell collection. Their archive had been digitized, allowing me to ingest assets into the UT Libraries digital asset management system and publish them to the Collections portal. I created MODS metadata using authority files and controlled vocabularies to thoroughly describe assets, optimizing access. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Alison Brislin | Portfolio | Alternative Access Points for the Alexander Architectural Archives | Alexander Architectural Archives | I worked with the Alexander Architectural Archives to identify a project which would be useful for research during and post the COVID-19 crisis. We decided it prudent to create alternative access points to further discoverability and scholarship when physical objects are unavailable. Prior to shelter-in-place, I had processed and created a finding aid for the Lang and Witchell collection. Their archive had been digitized, allowing me to ingest assets into the UT Libraries digital asset management system and publish them to the Collections portal. I created MODS metadata using authority files and controlled vocabularies to thoroughly describe assets, optimizing access. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Elizabeth Buchanan | Portfolio | Texas Digital Library Digitization Inventory | Texas Digital Library | The Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a consortium of higher education institutions in the state of Texas focused on building capacity for digital preservation and access to their member institutions collections. For my capstone, I surveyed the member institutions of the consortium in order to better understand their digitization needs and to identify hidden special collections that would particularly benefit from digitization. Using these results, I assessed a wide number of digitization labs in Texas and created a Lab Location Tool to allow TDLs members to locate and partner with labs that will best meet their digitization needs. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Elizabeth Buchanan | Portfolio | Texas Digital Library Digitization Inventory | Texas Digital Library | The Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a consortium of higher education institutions in the state of Texas focused on building capacity for digital preservation and access to their member institutions collections. For my capstone, I surveyed the member institutions of the consortium in order to better understand their digitization needs and to identify hidden special collections that would particularly benefit from digitization. Using these results, I assessed a wide number of digitization labs in Texas and created a Lab Location Tool to allow TDLs members to locate and partner with labs that will best meet their digitization needs. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chih-Han Chang | Portfolio | Improving Usability and User Adoptions of a Design Language System | WellSky | I am going to work on a project that dedicates on improving the usability and user adoption rates of WellSky Design Language System. The WellSky Design Language System is a design system developed by WellSky UX team that aims to increase effectiveness for designers, software developers, and product managers. It also provides a cohesive user experience and branding for WellSkys users. This project will evaluate the current status of usability and provide suggestions to enhance adoption rates so that I can present valuable insights for WellSky. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chih-Han Chang | Portfolio | Improving Usability and User Adoptions of a Design Language System | WellSky | I am going to work on a project that dedicates on improving the usability and user adoption rates of WellSky Design Language System. The WellSky Design Language System is a design system developed by WellSky UX team that aims to increase effectiveness for designers, software developers, and product managers. It also provides a cohesive user experience and branding for WellSkys users. This project will evaluate the current status of usability and provide suggestions to enhance adoption rates so that I can present valuable insights for WellSky. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yi-Chen Chen | Portfolio | Using Regularized Linear Regression to Identify Drivers of Diabetes Progression | Sentier Strategic Resources | Objective: Determine the crucial patient factors that predict diabetes progression in a real-world data set (Efron, 2004).Approach: We applied standard and regularized linear regression (lasso) to model disease progression using 10 explanatory variables (age, sex, bmi, average blood pressure, and 6 blood sera measurements).Key insight: Standard regression leads to overfitting and generalizes poorly to new data. Regularized regression inherently favors simpler models that successfully predict diabetes progression using fewer explanatory variables.Results: Five patient factors (including sex, bmi, blood pressure, s3 and s5) emerged as statistically significant drivers of diabetes disease progression. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yuqing Chen | Portfolio | Digital Subscriber Management for Hyper-personalized Enterprise Network Plans | Nokia | This project focused on enabling a digital transformation targeted at connecting the needs of telecommunication service providers and their enterprise consumers. This platform will serve as a network management service that facilitates the creation of hyper-personalized enterprise plans and proactive recommendations. By using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to filter and provide insights from enterprise data, carriers will be able to differentiate their service offerings while saving money and utilizing their resources effectively. By including customizable features in each service offering, enterprises will be able to service their end consumer in the most efficient way possible. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yi-Chen Chen | Portfolio | Using Regularized Linear Regression to Identify Drivers of Diabetes Progression | Sentier Strategic Resources | Objective: Determine the crucial patient factors that predict diabetes progression in a real-world data set (Efron, 2004).Approach: We applied standard and regularized linear regression (lasso) to model disease progression using 10 explanatory variables (age, sex, bmi, average blood pressure, and 6 blood sera measurements).Key insight: Standard regression leads to overfitting and generalizes poorly to new data. Regularized regression inherently favors simpler models that successfully predict diabetes progression using fewer explanatory variables.Results: Five patient factors (including sex, bmi, blood pressure, s3 and s5) emerged as statistically significant drivers of diabetes disease progression. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yuqing Chen | Portfolio | Digital Subscriber Management for Hyper-personalized Enterprise Network Plans | Nokia | This project focused on enabling a digital transformation targeted at connecting the needs of telecommunication service providers and their enterprise consumers. This platform will serve as a network management service that facilitates the creation of hyper-personalized enterprise plans and proactive recommendations. By using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to filter and provide insights from enterprise data, carriers will be able to differentiate their service offerings while saving money and utilizing their resources effectively. By including customizable features in each service offering, enterprises will be able to service their end consumer in the most efficient way possible. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chongyan Chen | Portfolio | Image Captioning and Visual Question Answering with External Knowledge | The field of computer vision has made significant advances in visual question answering (VQA) and image captioning. The sophisticated models in use today work well on simple tasks but they perform poorly when the task requires common sense or external knowledge. Previous research has explored VQA using a knowledge base and image captioning using reverse image search. However, there is a need for studies that explore the benefits of multi-source external knowledge for real tasks in these two areas. This thesis compares three kinds of external knowledge: knowledgebase, reverse image search, and search by text and evaluates them on two image captioning datasets: COCO-captions and VizWiz-captions as well as on three visual question answering datasets: VQA v2, VizWiz-VQA, and OK-VQA. The results show that including external knowledge can largely improve the accuracy of VQA. This research confirms that reverse image search is suitable for the image captioning task and suggests to explore knowledge base for image captioning. It also suggests that knowledge base is more suitable for traditional VQA while search by text is more suitable for VizWiz VQA dataset. Besides, the results show a possibility of answering visual questions using low-quality images or even answering unanswerable questions by using external knowledge. Our research provides greater understanding for the VizWiz Challenge and reveals a gap between traditional VQA/Image captioning task and real VQA/Image captioning task from the perspective of external knowledge. | Spring 2020 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Chongyan Chen | Portfolio | Image Captioning and Visual Question Answering with External Knowledge | School of Information, the University of Texas at Austin | The field of computer vision has made significant advances in visual question answering (VQA) and image captioning. The sophisticated models in use today work well on simple tasks but they perform poorly when the task requires common sense or external knowledge. Previous research has explored VQA using a knowledge base and image captioning using reverse image search. However, there is a need for studies that explore the benefits of multi-source external knowledge for real tasks in these two areas. This thesis compares three kinds of external knowledge: knowledgebase, reverse image search, and search by text and evaluates them on two image captioning datasets: COCO-captions and VizWiz-captions as well as on three visual question answering datasets: VQA v2, VizWiz-VQA, and OK-VQA. The results show that including external knowledge can largely improve the accuracy of VQA. This research confirms that reverse image search is suitable for the image captioning task and suggests to explore knowledge base for image captioning. It also suggests that knowledge base is more suitable for traditional VQA while search by text is more suitable for VizWiz VQA dataset. Besides, the results show a possibility of answering visual questions using low-quality images or even answering unanswerable questions by using external knowledge. Our research provides greater understanding for the VizWiz Challenge and reveals a gap between traditional VQA/Image captioning task and real VQA/Image captioning task from the perspective of external knowledge. | Spring 2020 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Jingyi Cheng | Portfolio | IMI Mental Health Peer Support Project | The Institute for Media Innovation at the Moody College of Communication | The project deals with uncovering and tackling issues related to mental health care and access of resources amongst the youth. The project followed the design thinking process. We conducted research to identify the barriers for young people in mental health support, and explored and ideated how smartphones and social media can be integrated with Artificial Intelligence to offer more innovative and relevant mental health care through peer support, increasing mental health literacy. The final deliverable a working prototype that allows young people to form a safe and supportive community among mental health peers and provides professional mental health care services from trained peer specialists. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Wei Cheng | Portfolio | Redesigning the File Sharing Experience for SAP Digital UX Team | SAP | The work documents of SAP Digital UX Team need to migrate from an OneDrive shared folder to a new SharePoint site. By utilizing UX design process to plan the file migration process, I conducted interviews with the stakeholders to define needs and goals, planned and prototyped the site's structure, finally designed and implemented the new SharePoint site. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jingyi Cheng | Portfolio | IMI Mental Health Peer Support Project | The Institute for Media Innovation at the Moody College of Communication | The project deals with uncovering and tackling issues related to mental health care and access of resources amongst the youth. The project followed the design thinking process. We conducted research to identify the barriers for young people in mental health support, and explored and ideated how smartphones and social media can be integrated with Artificial Intelligence to offer more innovative and relevant mental health care through peer support, increasing mental health literacy. The final deliverable a working prototype that allows young people to form a safe and supportive community among mental health peers and provides professional mental health care services from trained peer specialists. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Wei Cheng | Portfolio | Redesigning the File Sharing Experience for SAP Digital UX Team | SAP | The work documents of SAP Digital UX Team need to migrate from an OneDrive shared folder to a new SharePoint site. By utilizing UX design process to plan the file migration process, I conducted interviews with the stakeholders to define needs and goals, planned and prototyped the site's structure, finally designed and implemented the new SharePoint site. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Eric Chi | Portfolio | Faculty Innovation Center Website Redesign | Faculty Innovation Center | The Faculty Innovation Center (FIC) of UT Austin provides innovative teaching and learning strategies and tools that help faculty and students to achieve their goal successfully. However, due to the lack of a thorough plan when building the sites, it's difficult for users to navigate through the resources. My job is to help them update their information architecture and deliver a wonderful experience to users. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Eric Chi | Portfolio | Faculty Innovation Center Website Redesign | Faculty Innovation Center | The Faculty Innovation Center (FIC) of UT Austin provides innovative teaching and learning strategies and tools that help faculty and students to achieve their goal successfully. However, due to the lack of a thorough plan when building the sites, it's difficult for users to navigate through the resources. My job is to help them update their information architecture and deliver a wonderful experience to users. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Wei-Chun Chou | Portfolio | Design an Interactive Trajectory Planning Tool for Brain Surgery in EpiToMe system | University of Texas Health Center at Houston | Implanting electrodes in patients' brains is often necessary to precisely locate the source of seizure activities. This delicate surgery needs a detailed plan. The ToMe Team develops an innovative web application that allows doctors to add conventional electrodes or create their own marks on six angles of brain maps. This tool can help doctors to record the trajectory of electrodes during the case conference before they fine-tune the surgical software. I am responsible for designing the interactive brain map and coding the part of the prototype with an agile process that iterates a version every two weeks. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Wei-Chun Chou | Portfolio | Design an Interactive Trajectory Planning Tool for Brain Surgery in EpiToMe system | University of Texas Health Center at Houston | Implanting electrodes in patients' brains is often necessary to precisely locate the source of seizure activities. This delicate surgery needs a detailed plan. The ToMe Team develops an innovative web application that allows doctors to add conventional electrodes or create their own marks on six angles of brain maps. This tool can help doctors to record the trajectory of electrodes during the case conference before they fine-tune the surgical software. I am responsible for designing the interactive brain map and coding the part of the prototype with an agile process that iterates a version every two weeks. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Wan-Chun Chu | Portfolio | Redesign a Library Cataloging System | Center of Transportation Research | The staff query and cataloging system is a system used by the librarians of the Center of Transportation Research(CTR). They use this system to search, browse, and edit the records of CTRs collections. While the system has been functioning well to serve the tasks conducted by the librarians, it has long been complained about its inconsistent and outdated design. The goal of the project is to evaluate users needs and current workflow and incorporate them into the new design of interfaces. The focus of the new design is to create a better user experience. In this project, I utilized heuristic evaluation to uncover usability problems and made design recommendations based on them. Then I conducted three user shadowing sessions with the librarians to find out their pain points and observe how they use the system to complete their daily tasks. Finally, based on the findings of my research, I produced design documents including wireframes and hi-fi mockups in an iterative manner. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Wan-Chun Chu | Portfolio | Redesign a Library Cataloging System | Center of Transportation Research | The staff query and cataloging system is a system used by the librarians of the Center of Transportation Research(CTR). They use this system to search, browse, and edit the records of CTRs collections. While the system has been functioning well to serve the tasks conducted by the librarians, it has long been complained about its inconsistent and outdated design. The goal of the project is to evaluate users needs and current workflow and incorporate them into the new design of interfaces. The focus of the new design is to create a better user experience. In this project, I utilized heuristic evaluation to uncover usability problems and made design recommendations based on them. Then I conducted three user shadowing sessions with the librarians to find out their pain points and observe how they use the system to complete their daily tasks. Finally, based on the findings of my research, I produced design documents including wireframes and hi-fi mockups in an iterative manner. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| YiJu Chung | Portfolio | UX Research and Design of the Internal Tool | Proximity Learning | Provide input for the user experience and design of our internal tools. Work on internal user experience and operational workflow improvement and provide tool design suggestions. The major focus will be around the topic of the internal tools for building information exchanging among different operational teams. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| YiJu Chung | Portfolio | UX Research and Design of the Internal Tool | Proximity Learning | Provide input for the user experience and design of our internal tools. Work on internal user experience and operational workflow improvement and provide tool design suggestions. The major focus will be around the topic of the internal tools for building information exchanging among different operational teams. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Logan Cooley | Portfolio | Chant Hypertexts: A Web Resource for Medieval Chants | University of Texas at Austin, Butler School of Music | Dr. Luisa Nardini of the Butler School is creating a companion website to her forthcoming book Chant Hypertexts on medieval Italian liturgical chants. My project has focused on using Caspio to create the database of chants which underlies the site. I have also created a prototype of the sites visual portion, which presents digitized chant manuscripts, modern transcriptions, and annotated Latin texts in Digital Mappa. Following this project, users can now search the full repository of chants by a number of parameters and view all currently available images and texts. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Logan Cooley | Portfolio | Chant Hypertexts: A Web Resource for Medieval Chants | University of Texas at Austin, Butler School of Music | Dr. Luisa Nardini of the Butler School is creating a companion website to her forthcoming book Chant Hypertexts on medieval Italian liturgical chants. My project has focused on using Caspio to create the database of chants which underlies the site. I have also created a prototype of the sites visual portion, which presents digitized chant manuscripts, modern transcriptions, and annotated Latin texts in Digital Mappa. Following this project, users can now search the full repository of chants by a number of parameters and view all currently available images and texts. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ken Copelin | Portfolio | CDS 2.0: Physician Led Collaborative Goal Setting for Patients with Diabetes | Dell Medical School, Department of Nutritional Sciences | Due to low income and lack of insurance coverage, patients that are referred to registered dieticians are less likely to attend follow-up appointments. For my capstone project, I conducted research to better understand the physician workflow and design software that would provide physicians with the information necessary to communicate nutritional concerns and collaborate on goals with their patients. Our research consisted of a competitive analysis, literature review, interviews with medical experts, design prototyping and user testing. The final product of our capstone project is an interactive prototype that focuses on collaborative nutritional goal setting between physician and patient. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ken Copelin | Portfolio | CDS 2.0: Physician Led Collaborative Goal Setting for Patients with Diabetes | Dell Medical School, Department of Nutritional Sciences | Due to low income and lack of insurance coverage, patients that are referred to registered dieticians are less likely to attend follow-up appointments. For my capstone project, I conducted research to better understand the physician workflow and design software that would provide physicians with the information necessary to communicate nutritional concerns and collaborate on goals with their patients. Our research consisted of a competitive analysis, literature review, interviews with medical experts, design prototyping and user testing. The final product of our capstone project is an interactive prototype that focuses on collaborative nutritional goal setting between physician and patient. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Brady Cox | Portfolio | Identifying Solutions for Long-Term Information Needs at ERCOT | Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) | Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power for about 90 percent of the states electric load. Working as a Records Management Specialist this semester for ERCOTs Information Governance program, I performed research and proposed solutions to meet the companys long-term information needs. This included research on industry standards, vendors, and third-party solutions for long-term digital preservation of information. Deliverables included a business justification document, a draft set of business requirements that can be used for a future RFI or RFP, an executive summary of the work performed, and a recommendation to ERCOTs upper management. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Brady Cox | Portfolio | Identifying Solutions for Long-Term Information Needs at ERCOT | Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) | Electric Reliability Council of Texas, Inc. (ERCOT) manages the flow of electric power for about 90 percent of the states electric load. Working as a Records Management Specialist this semester for ERCOTs Information Governance program, I performed research and proposed solutions to meet the companys long-term information needs. This included research on industry standards, vendors, and third-party solutions for long-term digital preservation of information. Deliverables included a business justification document, a draft set of business requirements that can be used for a future RFI or RFP, an executive summary of the work performed, and a recommendation to ERCOTs upper management. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Di Cui | Portfolio | UT Health San Antonios Pattern Library Website Research | UT Health San Antonio | Analyzing current UT health San Antonios pattern library and design system websites for both internalaudiences and third-party resources who would use it to build or customize websites and digital interface. The focus of this project would be research, recommendations and possibly prototyping of ways to effectively package and present the whole design system which including functional components, accessibility practices, governance documents and design patterns. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Di Cui | Portfolio | UT Health San Antonios Pattern Library Website Research | UT Health San Antonio | Analyzing current UT health San Antonios pattern library and design system websites for both internalaudiences and third-party resources who would use it to build or customize websites and digital interface. The focus of this project would be research, recommendations and possibly prototyping of ways to effectively package and present the whole design system which including functional components, accessibility practices, governance documents and design patterns. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Linna Dean | Portfolio | TSLACs Talking Book Program: Inventory, Appraise, and Design a Database for Copyright Permission Letters | Texas State Library and Archives Commission | The Talking Book Program (TBP) within TSLAC records books in audio format for Texans with visual, physical, or reading disabilities. Prior to 1996, TBP had to get permission from the copyright holder to record a book in their studios. For this project, I looked at the records of over 3,000 books while also separating the permission letters from internal collection information materials. I created a metadata schema and determined the best database to use based on the letters and interviews with stakeholders. The design and instructions will allow TBP to build and enter data into the searchable database. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Linna Dean | Portfolio | TSLACs Talking Book Program: Inventory, Appraise, and Design a Database for Copyright Permission Letters | Texas State Library and Archives Commission | The Talking Book Program (TBP) within TSLAC records books in audio format for Texans with visual, physical, or reading disabilities. Prior to 1996, TBP had to get permission from the copyright holder to record a book in their studios. For this project, I looked at the records of over 3,000 books while also separating the permission letters from internal collection information materials. I created a metadata schema and determined the best database to use based on the letters and interviews with stakeholders. The design and instructions will allow TBP to build and enter data into the searchable database. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Xiangrui Deng | Portfolio | Texas Wholesaler Distributor Database Performance Improvement | Texas State Board of Pharmacy | Texas Wholesaler Distributor Database (TWDD), which is maintained by the Texas State Board of Pharmacy (TSBP), is a database that provides agency staff with information on what drug pharmacies and facilities are purchasing from wholesalers. My project improved the whole working process of TWDD by modifying the upload procedure and processing disorganized Excel files automatically. This project gives TSBP staff the ability to manage and import wholesaler data updates with some level of automation, which saves them a certain amount of time. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Xiangrui Deng | Portfolio | Texas Wholesaler Distributor Database Performance Improvement | Texas State Board of Pharmacy | Texas Wholesaler Distributor Database (TWDD), which is maintained by the Texas State Board of Pharmacy (TSBP), is a database that provides agency staff with information on what drug pharmacies and facilities are purchasing from wholesalers. My project improved the whole working process of TWDD by modifying the upload procedure and processing disorganized Excel files automatically. This project gives TSBP staff the ability to manage and import wholesaler data updates with some level of automation, which saves them a certain amount of time. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kelly Ellis | Portfolio | Records Management in Equine Therapy: Improving Student Records Maintenance and Compliance within the G-Suite | Healing With Horses Ranch | Healing with Horses Ranch is a non-profit center that offers equine-facilitated psychotherapy and therapeutic riding lessons to hundreds of clients each year. All students must have up-to-date records regarding their medical and financial status, as well as their progress within lessons. Students who receive financial assistance from external agencies have further record-compliance requirements placed upon them. My project provides a records management structure within HHR's existing G-Suite, through document templates and file management protocols, that allows for consistent and streamlined data entry, migration, linking, and auto-population. This proposed records management system facilitates administrative maintenance of and access to student data while making it easier for instructors to populate the student records. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kelly Ellis | Portfolio | Records Management in Equine Therapy: Improving Student Records Maintenance and Compliance within the G-Suite | Healing With Horses Ranch | Healing with Horses Ranch is a non-profit center that offers equine-facilitated psychotherapy and therapeutic riding lessons to hundreds of clients each year. All students must have up-to-date records regarding their medical and financial status, as well as their progress within lessons. Students who receive financial assistance from external agencies have further record-compliance requirements placed upon them. My project provides a records management structure within HHR's existing G-Suite, through document templates and file management protocols, that allows for consistent and streamlined data entry, migration, linking, and auto-population. This proposed records management system facilitates administrative maintenance of and access to student data while making it easier for instructors to populate the student records. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Lucy Flamm | Portfolio | Jaridat al-Balagh: Egyptian Serials and the University of Texas' Post-Acquisition Processes | Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas at Austin | I managed the post-acquisition process of the Egyptian cultural journal al-Balagh al-usbui at UT's Perry-Castaeda Library. This included crafting multilingual metadata, transforming metadata for the university's digital asset management system, writing a proposal for integration into the UT curriculum, and designing an exhibit to highlight these materials. The project represents efforts to diversify available digital resources, contribute to honing applications of optical character recognition services for non-Roman scripts, and my commitment to libraries as sites of cross-cultural understanding and exchange. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Lucy Flamm | Portfolio | Jaridat al-Balagh: Egyptian Serials and the University of Texas' Post-Acquisition Processes | Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas at Austin | I managed the post-acquisition process of the Egyptian cultural journal al-Balagh al-usbui at UT's Perry-Castaeda Library. This included crafting multilingual metadata, transforming metadata for the university's digital asset management system, writing a proposal for integration into the UT curriculum, and designing an exhibit to highlight these materials. The project represents efforts to diversify available digital resources, contribute to honing applications of optical character recognition services for non-Roman scripts, and my commitment to libraries as sites of cross-cultural understanding and exchange. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chad Garrett | Portfolio | Don't Take that Tone with Me:The Importance of Evidence-based Voice and Tone Strategy in Explosive Growth Technology Firms | Favor | Kind, funny, formal, serious. We all recognize loved ones voices without seeing their faces. Organizations are no different. Brand voice defines how customers view an organization and its products and serves as a critical part of well-designed user experiences. Voice can have real, long-term effects on an organizations reputation and bottom line. This project explores the development of brand voice at Favor, an app-based, on-demand delivery company in Austin. I employ evidence-based methodologies to measure the perception of brand voice against the brands goals. Ultimately, I offer frameworks for refining that voice to align with customer desires and concerns. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chad Garrett | Portfolio | Don't Take that Tone with Me:The Importance of Evidence-based Voice and Tone Strategy in Explosive Growth Technology Firms | Favor | Kind, funny, formal, serious. We all recognize loved ones' voices without seeing their faces. Organizations are no different. Brand voice defines how customers view an organization and its products and serves as a critical part of well-designed user experiences. Voice can have real, long-term effects on an organization's reputation and bottom line. This project explores the development of brand voice at Favor, an app-based, on-demand delivery company in Austin. I employ evidence-based methodologies to measure the perception of brand voice against the brand's goals. Ultimately, I offer frameworks for refining that voice to align with customer desires and concerns. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Mary Beth Garrido | Portfolio | Data to Diagnosis: Designing a Data-Secure Patient Engagement Platform for Dell Medical School | Dell Medical School | The objective of this project is to design, develop, and demonstrate a mobile patient engagement technology (PET) platform for Dell Medical School's Underrepresented Populations Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP). It is my responsibility to employ design-thinking methodologies and user-centered design approaches in the development of key deliverables, namely a high-fidelity prototype. The final product will empower diverse community groups to gain and give access to their health data while ensuring the security of their personal information through privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL). | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Mary Beth Garrido | Portfolio | Data to Diagnosis: Designing a Data-Secure Patient Engagement Platform for Dell Medical School | Dell Medical School | The objective of this project is to design, develop, and demonstrate a mobile patient engagement technology (PET) platform for Dell Medical School's Underrepresented Populations Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP). It is my responsibility to employ design-thinking methodologies and user-centered design approaches in the development of key deliverables, namely a high-fidelity prototype. The final product will empower diverse community groups to gain and give access to their health data while ensuring the security of their personal information through privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL). | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Matthew Glaser | Portfolio | Creating Transparency: Visualizing the New Braunfels Public Library's Reports to the State | New Braunfels Public Library | In October 2019, the New Braunfels Public Library celebrated its twentieth anniversary. As part of the compilation of statistics for the annual report to the Texas State Library, I compiled statistics from 1999-2019 in an attempt to visualize how the library has changed over the past two decades. In doing so, I created a visualization of the 2019 report. Using the Aspen Institutes Rising to the Challenge: Re-Envisioning Public Libraries as a guide, the purpose of compiling these annual reports is to give patrons a visual representation into both the administrative functions and the services libraries provide. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Matthew Glaser | Portfolio | Creating Transparency: Visualizing the New Braunfels Public Library's Reports to the State | New Braunfels Public Library | In October 2019, the New Braunfels Public Library celebrated its twentieth anniversary. As part of the compilation of statistics for the annual report to the Texas State Library, I compiled statistics from 1999-2019 in an attempt to visualize how the library has changed over the past two decades. In doing so, I created a visualization of the 2019 report. Using the Aspen Institutes Rising to the Challenge: Re-Envisioning Public Libraries as a guide, the purpose of compiling these annual reports is to give patrons a visual representation into both the administrative functions and the services libraries provide. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Darian Gleghorn | Portfolio | Creating a Roadmap to Market Entry for an Hourly Job Hunting Platform | Industri.us | The goal of this project was to create a roadmap for market entry for an early-stages hourly job search platform startup called Industri.us. To begin accomplishing the goal, market analysis, competitor evaluation, and business model scenario analysis were conducted. Additionally, accessibility and potential partnerships with other companies were researched, as these would be features unique to the platform. The findings reveal that the application has a significant potential market, and there are several options for pricing and market entry. The distinguishing features will help the new platform stand out among competitors. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Darian Gleghorn | Portfolio | Creating a Roadmap to Market Entry for an Hourly Job Hunting Platform | Industri.us | The goal of this project was to create a roadmap for market entry for an early-stages hourly job search platform startup called Industri.us. To begin accomplishing the goal, market analysis, competitor evaluation, and business model scenario analysis were conducted. Additionally, accessibility and potential partnerships with other companies were researched, as these would be features unique to the platform. The findings reveal that the application has a significant potential market, and there are several options for pricing and market entry. The distinguishing features will help the new platform stand out among competitors. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yanbin HAO | Portfolio | Heuristic Evaluation and Expert Review of AutoAI in Watson Studio | IBM | The AutoAI graphical tool in Watson Studio can automatically analyze your data and generate candidate model pipelines customized for your predictive modeling problem. The objective of the project is to examine the design of AutoAI and identify usability roadblocks with the heuristic evaluation and expert review methods. 2 UX experts were recruited and conducted expert reviews. The expert review results generated 25 insightful findings for the AutoAI product and helped designers to design the next version of AutoAI. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yanbin HAO | Portfolio | Heuristic Evaluation and Expert Review of AutoAI in Watson Studio | IBM | The AutoAI graphical tool in Watson Studio can automatically analyze your data and generate candidate model pipelines customized for your predictive modeling problem. The objective of the project is to examine the design of AutoAI and identify usability roadblocks with the heuristic evaluation and expert review methods. 2 UX experts were recruited and conducted expert reviews. The expert review results generated 25 insightful findings for the AutoAI product and helped designers to design the next version of AutoAI. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Damian Hill | Portfolio | Bringing Warehouse Partners into Focus: UX Research and Design for an H-E-B Enterprise Supply Chain Data Application | H-E-B | Over the course of seven months, I worked to gather a holistic understanding of warehouse partners in order to translate that research into designs for a web-based data application that is replacing a legacy mainframe application. My generative work included more than 40 hours of onsite observation and contextual inquiry, individual and group interviews, SME interviews, and user feedback sessions. The output of my work included research synthesis, mockups, prototypes, presentations, and now live application elements. We're currently planning evaluative research to validate our design work and identify improvements. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Damian Hill | Portfolio | Bringing Warehouse Partners into Focus: UX Research and Design for an H-E-B Enterprise Supply Chain Data Application | H-E-B | Over the course of seven months, I worked to gather a holistic understanding of warehouse partners in order to translate that research into designs for a web-based data application that is replacing a legacy mainframe application. My generative work included more than 40 hours of onsite observation and contextual inquiry, individual and group interviews, SME interviews, and user feedback sessions. The output of my work included research synthesis, mockups, prototypes, presentations, and now live application elements. We're currently planning evaluative research to validate our design work and identify improvements. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Hannah Hopkins | Portfolio | Automated Warranting Detection Codebook | The Automated Warranting Detection Codebook captures the process of detecting discourse patterns with machine learning and orientates rhetoricians to machine learning applications. I worked with statistical computing language R to conduct feature identification on a corpus of drug funding profiles and disclosures for warranting, a mode of argumentation designed to lend support to evidence not entirely trusted by the audience. We sought to determine how funding profiles and attendant conflicts of interest change discourse patterns in biomedical publishing. Our analysis and co-written article contribute to ongoing inquiry on the effects of conflicts of interest on both medical discourse and outcomes. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Hannah Hopkins | Portfolio | Automated Warranting Detection Codebook | The Automated Warranting Detection Codebook captures the process of detecting discourse patterns with machine learning and orientates rhetoricians to machine learning applications. I worked with statistical computing language R to conduct feature identification on a corpus of drug funding profiles and disclosures for warranting, a mode of argumentation designed to lend support to evidence not entirely trusted by the audience. We sought to determine how funding profiles and attendant conflicts of interest change discourse patterns in biomedical publishing. Our analysis and co-written article contribute to ongoing inquiry on the effects of conflicts of interest on both medical discourse and outcomes. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kassondra Horan | Portfolio | Digital Knitting with a Side of Blue Algae Soles Please A Sustainable Menu for Slow Fashion | SUAVS | According to the EPA, in 2017 landfills received 11.2 million tons of textile waste. In 2019 the New York Times reported that over 60% of textiles are now synthetics derived from fossil fuels. So if the numbers havent varied drastically, roughly 9.52 million tons of textile waste added to landfills yearly wont decay.In the spirit of trying to change that I teamed up with SUAVS, a local footwear brand, to complete a study where we explored the sustainable efforts SUAVS employs as well as other industry techniques that could propel them towards a completely circular production cycle. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kassondra Horan | Portfolio | Digital Knitting with a Side of Blue Algae Soles Please A Sustainable Menu for Slow Fashion | SUAVS | According to the EPA, in 2017 landfills received 11.2 million tons of textile waste. In 2019 the New York Times reported that over 60% of textiles are now synthetics derived from fossil fuels. So if the numbers havent varied drastically, roughly 9.52 million tons of textile waste added to landfills yearly wont decay.In the spirit of trying to change that I teamed up with SUAVS, a local footwear brand, to complete a study where we explored the sustainable efforts SUAVS employs as well as other industry techniques that could propel them towards a completely circular production cycle. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shi Ting Huang | Portfolio | From 6 to All: How to do Company Research within Six Steps? | Austin Technology Incubator | Nowadayswe are gradually transitioning from the information explosion era to the intelligence era, which has led to the increasingly important role of business intelligence in business activities. Business intelligence allows us to anticipate business trends, study government policies to gain insight into cutting-edge technology; reduce risks through competitor strategy analysis. In this project, I collaborated with Austin Technology Incubator to study how to collect and analyze business intelligence rigorously and how to form insight and strategy for companies through 6 steps, namely company profile, industry, financials, customer, competitor and methodology. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shi Ting Huang | Portfolio | From 6 to All: How to do Company Research within Six Steps? | Austin Technology Incubator | Nowadayswe are gradually transitioning from the information explosion era to the intelligence era, which has led to the increasingly important role of business intelligence in business activities. Business intelligence allows us to anticipate business trends, study government policies to gain insight into cutting-edge technology; reduce risks through competitor strategy analysis. In this project, I collaborated with Austin Technology Incubator to study how to collect and analyze business intelligence rigorously and how to form insight and strategy for companies through 6 steps, namely company profile, industry, financials, customer, competitor and methodology. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yu-Kuan Hwang | Portfolio | Favor Delivery: Non-Restaurant Delivery Customer Experience | Favor Delivery | Favor is interested in understanding the nuances of how on-demand customers use Favor (and similar services) in their daily lives. I started with market research to identify the competitors and delivery service market outlook. Then I compared the top 3 food delivery competitors to find out where Favor's advantage is. After coming to a conclusion that Favor's strength lies in its slogan "Anything delivered", Favor offers more than just food delivery. I set out to interview Favor and non-Favor customers to understand their current non-restaurant delivery experience to see how Favor can improve the experience. I ended with recommendations for Favor based on primary and secondary research that I conducted. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yu-Kuan Hwang | Portfolio | Favor Delivery: Non-Restaurant Delivery Customer Experience | Favor Delivery | Favor is interested in understanding the nuances of how on-demand customers use Favor (and similar services) in their daily lives. I started with market research to identify the competitors and delivery service market outlook. Then I compared the top 3 food delivery competitors to find out where Favor's advantage is. After coming to a conclusion that Favor's strength lies in its slogan "Anything delivered", Favor offers more than just food delivery. I set out to interview Favor and non-Favor customers to understand their current non-restaurant delivery experience to see how Favor can improve the experience. I ended with recommendations for Favor based on primary and secondary research that I conducted. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Takahiro Ishii | Portfolio | Innovating the First-time Experience of Cloud One Network Security | Trend Micro | My project focuses on the first-time experience (or onboarding experience) of our new product Cloud One Network Security. Traditionally, the first-time experience of network security products has been painful, because users need to take extensive training and troubleshooting sessions. Following this current state, my UX project aimed to streamline the process, eliminate training, and minimize troubleshooting. The outcomes are personas, user journey maps, prototypes, and usability reports. My UX research has revealed four new persona types and their current user journey. Then, the prototypes and the usability report envisioned the future direction we should head to. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Takahiro Ishii | Portfolio | Innovating the First-time Experience of Cloud One Network Security | Trend Micro | My project focuses on the first-time experience (or onboarding experience) of our new product Cloud One Network Security. Traditionally, the first-time experience of network security products has been painful, because users need to take extensive training and troubleshooting sessions. Following this current state, my UX project aimed to streamline the process, eliminate training, and minimize troubleshooting. The outcomes are personas, user journey maps, prototypes, and usability reports. My UX research has revealed four new persona types and their current user journey. Then, the prototypes and the usability report envisioned the future direction we should head to. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shashank Jain | Portfolio | Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC) onboarding platform - Automating the collaboration between telco and cloud service providers. | Nokia | With technological development advancing rapidly towards compute-heavy, low latency services like autonomous cars and virtual reality, cloud, tech and communication companies are innovating new methods to deliver the required performance. 5G and Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC) are two technologies that promise ultra-low latency to cater to these new use cases and revolutionize the digital marketplace. In this project, collaborated with a team of managers, engineers and designer to identify and prototype opportunities for Nokia software to play a critical part in the 5G-MEC ecosystem by enabling seamless integration between multiple stakeholders in that ecosystem. The project followed an intensive design thinking process and employed strategies like interviews, storyboards, personas, journey maps, and iterative wireframes to prototype a high fidelity automated web platform that enables future MEC providers to onboard and connect their MEC datacenters to telecommunication networks seamlessly. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shashank Jain | Portfolio | Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC) onboarding platform - Automating the collaboration between telco and cloud service providers. | Nokia | With technological development advancing rapidly towards compute-heavy, low latency services like autonomous cars and virtual reality, cloud, tech and communication companies are innovating new methods to deliver the required performance. 5G and Multi-Access Edge Compute (MEC) are two technologies that promise ultra-low latency to cater to these new use cases and revolutionize the digital marketplace. In this project, collaborated with a team of managers, engineers and designer to identify and prototype opportunities for Nokia software to play a critical part in the 5G-MEC ecosystem by enabling seamless integration between multiple stakeholders in that ecosystem. The project followed an intensive design thinking process and employed strategies like interviews, storyboards, personas, journey maps, and iterative wireframes to prototype a high fidelity automated web platform that enables future MEC providers to onboard and connect their MEC datacenters to telecommunication networks seamlessly. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Isha Dilipbhai Kanani | Portfolio | Industri.us: Employment Platform for Small Businesses | The objective of this project is to research the current needs of employment in small businesses like restaurants. While LinkedIn provides an employment platform to big IT-based companies, this project surveys what kind of employment does small business need. Based on the survey data, I will be running some analysis and presenting insights on the requirements to build an employment platform for small businesses. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Isha Dilipbhai Kanani | Portfolio | Industri.us: Employment Platform for Small Businesses | The objective of this project is to research the current needs of employment in small businesses like restaurants. While LinkedIn provides an employment platform to big IT-based companies, this project surveys what kind of employment does small business need. Based on the survey data, I will be running some analysis and presenting insights on the requirements to build an employment platform for small businesses. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Natalia Kapacinskas | Portfolio | Creating Primary Source Instruction Materials for the Briscoe Center for American History | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | To support instruction for visiting classes at the Briscoe Center for American History, I created a set of lesson plans using archival materials from the collections. Each lesson plan is based on an instruction method for teaching with primary sources by an experienced practitioner in the field. In addition to an outline for the class session, each plan includes a set of primary source materials related to a topic (such as labor activism in Texas in the 1960s or integration at UT), learning objectives informed by the RBMS-SAA Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, and suggested assessment methods for student learning. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Natalia Kapacinskas | Portfolio | Creating Primary Source Instruction Materials for the Briscoe Center for American History | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | To support instruction for visiting classes at the Briscoe Center for American History, I created a set of lesson plans using archival materials from the collections. Each lesson plan is based on an instruction method for teaching with primary sources by an experienced practitioner in the field. In addition to an outline for the class session, each plan includes a set of primary source materials related to a topic (such as labor activism in Texas in the 1960s or integration at UT), learning objectives informed by the RBMS-SAA Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, and suggested assessment methods for student learning. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Anmol Shridhar Khandeparkar | Portfolio | Product Conception - Industri.us | As a part of my Capstone project experience, I worked for my mentor, Jeni Putalavega Ross on the conception of an end-to-end product for the hourly job market. The Mission: Industri.uss mission is to help hourly workers find better employment opportunities, while also allowing recruiters to find and hire the right talent for their company in a seamless manner. My Role: I have worked on a product conception document for Industri.us. The Product Conception documentation consists of understanding the current state of the market, empathizing with customers and users to understand their problems, analyzing the size of the target market and understanding the competitive landscape, and then utilizing all the information collected to come up with a proposed solution along with a business model and key metrics to identify success for the business. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Anmol Shridhar Khandeparkar | Portfolio | Product Conception - Industri.us | As a part of my Capstone project experience, I worked for my mentor, Jeni Putalavega Ross on the conception of an end-to-end product for the hourly job market. The Mission: Industri.uss mission is to help hourly workers find better employment opportunities, while also allowing recruiters to find and hire the right talent for their company in a seamless manner. My Role: I have worked on a product conception document for Industri.us. The Product Conception documentation consists of understanding the current state of the market, empathizing with customers and users to understand their problems, analyzing the size of the target market and understanding the competitive landscape, and then utilizing all the information collected to come up with a proposed solution along with a business model and key metrics to identify success for the business. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Daniel Kramer | Portfolio | Information in Cyberspace (INF335) E-Learning Instructional Design | The University of Texas at Austin | For over 20 years, the UT School of Information has taught the undergraduate course, Information in Cyberspace. This online course has been developed and supported by the School of Information teaching assistants, and has evolved into specializations in Choose Your Own Adventure and HCI/UX. The work completed during this Capstone Project includes competitive analysis and a survey that indicates the need for a visual design Information course. The rest of the project was dedicated to developing a Design specialization curriculum for Information in Cyberspace to enable students with the fundamental design knowledge useful for careers in design and beyond. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Daniel Kramer | Portfolio | Information in Cyberspace (INF335) E-Learning Instructional Design | The University of Texas at Austin | For over 20 years, the UT School of Information has taught the undergraduate course, Information in Cyberspace. This online course has been developed and supported by the School of Information teaching assistants, and has evolved into specializations in Choose Your Own Adventure and HCI/UX. The work completed during this Capstone Project includes competitive analysis and a survey that indicates the need for a visual design Information course. The rest of the project was dedicated to developing a Design specialization curriculum for Information in Cyberspace to enable students with the fundamental design knowledge useful for careers in design and beyond. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kathleen Krysher | Portfolio | Reimagining Data Management at a University Writing Center | For my capstone project, I designed a new database for the University Writing Center (UWC) at the University of Texas at Austin. I will be submitting the constructed FileMaker database and accompanying report as my deliverables. The report includes a summary of information at the writing center, the database as represented in FileMaker, a data dictionary, and suggestions for future scripting and implementation. With this database, UWC administrators will be able to gain new insights from one central, consistent source that is inclusive of historical information. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kathleen Krysher | Portfolio | Reimagining Data Management at a University Writing Center | For my capstone project, I designed a new database for the University Writing Center (UWC) at the University of Texas at Austin. I will be submitting the constructed FileMaker database and accompanying report as my deliverables. The report includes a summary of information at the writing center, the database as represented in FileMaker, a data dictionary, and suggestions for future scripting and implementation. With this database, UWC administrators will be able to gain new insights from one central, consistent source that is inclusive of historical information. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Mickey Lanning | Portfolio | Sursum! Digitizing Correspondence at the Elisabet Ney Museum | The Elisabet Ney Museum | The Elisabet Ney Museum, the former studio home of German sculptor Elisabet Ney, is dedicated to showcasing Neys art and engaging the public through exhibitions and educational programs. My project involved curating and digitizing letters from the museums archives, generating and encoding metadata, and creating a digital archive and exhibits using Omeka; to support future digital projects, I also developed workflow materials. This project demonstrates the ways that small institutions can design digital projects with resources they already have, in addition to how open-source software and platforms can further a museums mission to bring stories to a wider audience. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Mickey Lanning | Portfolio | Sursum! Digitizing Correspondence at the Elisabet Ney Museum | The Elisabet Ney Museum | The Elisabet Ney Museum, the former studio home of German sculptor Elisabet Ney, is dedicated to showcasing Neys art and engaging the public through exhibitions and educational programs. My project involved curating and digitizing letters from the museums archives, generating and encoding metadata, and creating a digital archive and exhibits using Omeka; to support future digital projects, I also developed workflow materials. This project demonstrates the ways that small institutions can design digital projects with resources they already have, in addition to how open-source software and platforms can further a museums mission to bring stories to a wider audience. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Haley Latta | Portfolio | Developing the Texas Center for the Book Literary Map | Texas Center for the Book at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission | My capstone project centered around conducing the research needed for the creation for the Texas Literary Map. One of my primary responsibilities was determining the selection criteria for the map. I researched existing literary maps and contacted state librarians from across the nation in order to craft the criteria. I organized a running list of authors and works according to the authors awards and associations with Texas. Additionally, I crafted instructions for the projects sustainability in order to ensure that future workers could continue developing the map. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Haley Latta | Portfolio | Developing the Texas Center for the Book Literary Map | Texas Center for the Book at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission | My capstone project centered around conducing the research needed for the creation for the Texas Literary Map. One of my primary responsibilities was determining the selection criteria for the map. I researched existing literary maps and contacted state librarians from across the nation in order to craft the criteria. I organized a running list of authors and works according to the authors awards and associations with Texas. Additionally, I crafted instructions for the projects sustainability in order to ensure that future workers could continue developing the map. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jiaxin Li | Portfolio | Designing a Dashboard Facilitates Clinicians to Collaboratively Set Nutrition Goals with Patients | The Dell Medical School | Collaborative goal setting has been shown the potential to build a trusting relationship between clinicians and patients as well as improve the competence of patients in making behavioral change. Due to high incidence of no-show appointments referred by physicians to registered dieticians, setting an appropriate nutrition goal easily and efficiently during the primary care appointment becomes vitally important to initiate the behavioral change of patients. For my capstone project, I focused on designing a clinical decision-making tool that provides necessary nutrition-related information and facilitates primary care providers to adopt nutrition conversation into the appointments confidently and collaboratively set realistic diet goals with patients. Our project consisted of competitive analysis, literature review, interviews with healthcare providers, prototyping, usability testing, multiple iterations, and UX Report. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Xu Li | Portfolio | Sales Opportunity Status Prediction based on Users Activity Data Using Machine Learning Algorithm | Vertify, Inc | VertifyData is a data integration company that help their customer companies integrate marketing data and sales data together. Usually, sales opportunities are contacted and assessed case by case manually, which is an uncertain and inefficient process. This capstone project aims to improve this situation. It uses the activity data from those customer companies, build machine learning models and make predictions about the status of sales opportunities. Provide to those customers with strategic and valuable information automatically to facilitate better marketing analysis and sales achievements. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yizhuo Li | Portfolio | Web Page System for Automatically Importing Drug Orders into TSBPs Database | Texas State Board of Pharmacy (TSBP) | I am going to add some new features to the old web system of Texas State Board of Pharmacy (TSBP) which makes the whole system more automatic. Currently, the TSBP will receive the orders from the wholesalers by Email or submit a specific type of file from TSBPs unique system. However, the problem is the system now cant automatically load the data from the uploaded file and save the data into the TWDD database. Currently, this step is finished by a technical employee. Also, although the files type is required, the wholesalers sometimes will not follow the requirements. So, I try to make the whole process automatic and check whether the uploaded files are in the ARCOS format. If I finish these aims, that will help the TSBP to improve their efficiency. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jiaxin Li | Portfolio | Designing a Dashboard Facilitates Clinicians to Collaboratively Set Nutrition Goals with Patients | The Dell Medical School | Collaborative goal setting has been shown the potential to build a trusting relationship between clinicians and patients as well as improve the competence of patients in making behavioral change. Due to high incidence of no-show appointments referred by physicians to registered dieticians, setting an appropriate nutrition goal easily and efficiently during the primary care appointment becomes vitally important to initiate the behavioral change of patients. For my capstone project, I focused on designing a clinical decision-making tool that provides necessary nutrition-related information and facilitates primary care providers to adopt nutrition conversation into the appointments confidently and collaboratively set realistic diet goals with patients. Our project consisted of competitive analysis, literature review, interviews with healthcare providers, prototyping, usability testing, multiple iterations, and UX Report. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Xu Li | Portfolio | Sales Opportunity Status Prediction based on Users Activity Data Using Machine Learning Algorithm | Vertify, Inc | VertifyData is a data integration company that help their customer companies integrate marketing data and sales data together. Usually, sales opportunities are contacted and assessed case by case manually, which is an uncertain and inefficient process. This capstone project aims to improve this situation. It uses the activity data from those customer companies, build machine learning models and make predictions about the status of sales opportunities. Provide to those customers with strategic and valuable information automatically to facilitate better marketing analysis and sales achievements. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yizhuo Li | Portfolio | Web Page System for Automatically Importing Drug Orders into TSBPs Database | Texas State Board of Pharmacy (TSBP) | I am going to add some new features to the old web system of Texas State Board of Pharmacy (TSBP) which makes the whole system more automatic. Currently, the TSBP will receive the orders from the wholesalers by Email or submit a specific type of file from TSBPs unique system. However, the problem is the system now cant automatically load the data from the uploaded file and save the data into the TWDD database. Currently, this step is finished by a technical employee. Also, although the files type is required, the wholesalers sometimes will not follow the requirements. So, I try to make the whole process automatic and check whether the uploaded files are in the ARCOS format. If I finish these aims, that will help the TSBP to improve their efficiency. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Lan Li | Portfolio | Future Information Professionals Perspectives on the Impact of AI on the Future of Their Profession | The field of library and information science (LIS) has always shaped and been shaped by the changing tides of technology. Given that recent developments in AI appear to be the next technological wave that may bring major disruption for the future of information professionals, how are students in ALA-accredited masters programs reacting to these changes? This research seeks to report findings from interviews with students pursuing studies in librarianship and archival studies about their educational experiences with AI and their expectations about how AI will impact their future careers as librarians and archivists. Key themes that emerge from this analysis include structural and professional changes in libraries and archives, the loss of the human element in libraries and archives, and the ethical challenges of AI in libraries and archives. Recommendations based on these findings include ways to adapt LIS education to better prepare students, such as developing courses that combine the technical aspects of how to leverage AI and content and context relevant to libraries and archives, to ensure that librarians and archivists can play an active role in leveraging AI to better accomplish their goals of serving patrons information needs and wants and preserving the past. | Spring 2020 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Lan Li | Portfolio | Future Information Professionals Perspectives on the Impact of AI on the Future of Their Profession | School of Information | The field of library and information science (LIS) has always shaped and been shaped by the changing tides of technology. Given that recent developments in AI appear to be the next technological wave that may bring major disruption for the future of information professionals, how are students in ALA-accredited masters programs reacting to these changes? This research seeks to report findings from interviews with students pursuing studies in librarianship and archival studies about their educational experiences with AI and their expectations about how AI will impact their future careers as librarians and archivists. Key themes that emerge from this analysis include structural and professional changes in libraries and archives, the loss of the human element in libraries and archives, and the ethical challenges of AI in libraries and archives. Recommendations based on these findings include ways to adapt LIS education to better prepare students, such as developing courses that combine the technical aspects of how to leverage AI and content and context relevant to libraries and archives, to ensure that librarians and archivists can play an active role in leveraging AI to better accomplish their goals of serving patrons information needs and wants and preserving the past. | Spring 2020 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Yi Chun Lin | Portfolio | IoT-enabled Platform for Connected Buildings | Userade | It is my capstone project that works with Userade as a UX researcher internship in Austin. The project mainly studies a flagship product of a global power solutions company. This Product is a complete IoT-enabled platform for connected buildings, and we especially focus on its commercial real estate (CRE) segment. Through this project, the Company would like to realize their users more and create a seamless user experience for its users. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yi Chun Lin | Portfolio | IoT-enabled Platform for Connected Buildings | Userade | It is my capstone project that works with Userade as a UX researcher internship in Austin. The project mainly studies a flagship product of a global power solutions company. This Product is a complete IoT-enabled platform for connected buildings, and we especially focus on its commercial real estate (CRE) segment. Through this project, the Company would like to realize their users more and create a seamless user experience for its users. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Vinay Locharulu | Portfolio | Dell Smart Policy Advisor | Dell Technologies | This tool captures insights from various sources on Dell laptops and PCs from sources such as 'Dell Support Assist' and 'PC Doctor' to rank alerts leading to a hardware dispatch. The tool is currently predicting failures of PC commodities such as Hardware and Battery. An iterative machine learning pipeline using PySpark and Hadoop was developed to periodically assess alert trends. Database: Hive(Hadoop)Algorithms: Random Forest, SMOTE, Convolutional Neural Networks | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Vinay Locharulu | Portfolio | Dell Smart Policy Advisor | Dell Technologies | This tool captures insights from various sources on Dell laptops and PCs from sources such as 'Dell Support Assist' and 'PC Doctor' to rank alerts leading to a hardware dispatch. The tool is currently predicting failures of PC commodities such as Hardware and Battery. An iterative machine learning pipeline using PySpark and Hadoop was developed to periodically assess alert trends. Database: Hive(Hadoop)Algorithms: Random Forest, SMOTE, Convolutional Neural Networks | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Anne Loos | Portfolio | Abbie Hoffman Papers: Selection and Digitization Plan for Audiovisual Materials | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | Roughly one-third of the materials in the Abbie Hoffman Papers at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History consist of various audiovisual formats: 16mm film, open reel, cassette tape, and video. In developing a digitization priority plan, research brief, and description guide, this Capstone will provide guidance to future archivists responsible for digitizing and describing these 500+ audiovisual items. This will enable the preservation and access to rare materials documenting Hoffmans legacy, and demonstrates the intersection of Hoffmans guerilla theater-style protests with his ability to harness the power of mainstream media coverage in the genesis of counterculture television. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Anne Loos | Portfolio | Abbie Hoffman Papers: Selection and Digitization Plan for Audiovisual Materials | Dolph Briscoe Center for American History | Roughly one-third of the materials in the Abbie Hoffman Papers at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History consist of various audiovisual formats: 16mm film, open reel, cassette tape, and video. In developing a digitization priority plan, research brief, and description guide, this Capstone will provide guidance to future archivists responsible for digitizing and describing these 500+ audiovisual items. This will enable the preservation and access to rare materials documenting Hoffmans legacy, and demonstrates the intersection of Hoffmans guerilla theater-style protests with his ability to harness the power of mainstream media coverage in the genesis of counterculture television. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yuntao Lu | Portfolio | Analyzing Hong Kong Protest Data from Telegram | Recent Hong Kong protests expose conflicts between some people and the local and central governments. This project will analyze the recent 2019 Hong Kong protests (a.k.a., Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement) and examine the patterns of mobilization using data crawled from Telegram application. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Yuntao Lu | Portfolio | Analyzing Hong Kong Protest Data from Telegram | Recent Hong Kong protests expose conflicts between some people and the local and central governments. This project will analyze the recent 2019 Hong Kong protests (a.k.a., Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill movement) and examine the patterns of mobilization using data crawled from Telegram application. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sai Anand Maringanti | Portfolio | Clinically Accurate Report Generation | School of Information, UT Austin | There has been an impressive amount of progress with generating descriptive reports from radiographs, employing state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks, and complex Natural Language Processing. However, there is a gap between current models and ingrained nuances of the radiology domain that the models fail to leverage. This project explores this gap and finds possible solutions by enhancing the model architecture, extracting radiomic features from the radiographs, and generating an end-to-end architecture that employs radiomic feature extraction, a CNN encoder, and an RNN sentence and word decoder to generate clinically accurate reports from radiographs. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sai Anand Maringanti | Portfolio | Clinically Accurate Report Generation | School of Information, UT Austin | There has been an impressive amount of progress with generating descriptive reports from radiographs, employing state-of-the-art convolutional neural networks, and complex Natural Language Processing. However, there is a gap between current models and ingrained nuances of the radiology domain that the models fail to leverage. This project explores this gap and finds possible solutions by enhancing the model architecture, extracting radiomic features from the radiographs, and generating an end-to-end architecture that employs radiomic feature extraction, a CNN encoder, and an RNN sentence and word decoder to generate clinically accurate reports from radiographs. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Patrick Mclynch | Portfolio | Knowledge Management At TxDOT: Designing and Implementing Successful Knowledge Capture and Transfer | Texas Department of Transporation | The objective for my Project was to develop a way to capture and transfer knowledge from one TxDOT employee to another. Many employees possess vital knowledge that is often lost when they leave. Witnessing this occurring at TxDOT sparked the idea for this project. My project consisted of designing an interview process that extracted and collected this knowledge. I also aimed to present this information in a single place using a multilayered Wiki page. From the Wiki page, every aspect of the program I designed can be found there and used to help TxDOT operations continue to run smoothly. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Patrick Mclynch | Portfolio | Knowledge Management At TxDOT: Designing and Implementing Successful Knowledge Capture and Transfer | Texas Department of Transporation | The objective for my Project was to develop a way to capture and transfer knowledge from one TxDOT employee to another. Many employees possess vital knowledge that is often lost when they leave. Witnessing this occurring at TxDOT sparked the idea for this project. My project consisted of designing an interview process that extracted and collected this knowledge. I also aimed to present this information in a single place using a multilayered Wiki page. From the Wiki page, every aspect of the program I designed can be found there and used to help TxDOT operations continue to run smoothly. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Rachel Meyer | Portfolio | Digitizing the Work Projects Administration's George C. Davis Site Files | Texas Archeological Research Laboratory | From 1939 to 1941, the Work Projects Administration completed a site excavation of the George C. Davis archeological site. The records of this excavation, housed within the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory's records and made up of 2641 documents and 270 photograph prints, were organized, digitized, and treated with minor preservation techniques to ensure access to the collection for future students and researchers. A DACS compliant finding aid was also created to assist both in discovery of collection items among academic institutions and serve as a standard for future finding aid creation at TARL. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Rachel Meyer | Portfolio | Digitizing the Work Projects Administration's George C. Davis Site Files | Texas Archeological Research Laboratory | From 1939 to 1941, the Work Projects Administration completed a site excavation of the George C. Davis archeological site. The records of this excavation, housed within the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory's records and made up of 2641 documents and 270 photograph prints, were organized, digitized, and treated with minor preservation techniques to ensure access to the collection for future students and researchers. A DACS compliant finding aid was also created to assist both in discovery of collection items among academic institutions and serve as a standard for future finding aid creation at TARL. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Li Nie | Portfolio | Scenario-based Web Game Development | In the game, players will be asked questions under given scenarios. According to the choices made by players, they will gain different scores. The scenarios and questions are designed to introduce products and services from IBM Security. A general introduction to IBM Security is given at the end of the game.The front-end is designed and implemented with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Semantic UI framework. Data is stored in MySQL database. For back-end development, Java and Spring Boot framework are used to realize the functions like calculating scores, retrieving data from the database, and rendering results to the front-end pages. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Li Nie | Portfolio | Scenario-based Web Game Development | In the game, players will be asked questions under given scenarios. According to the choices made by players, they will gain different scores. The scenarios and questions are designed to introduce products and services from IBM Security. A general introduction to IBM Security is given at the end of the game.The front-end is designed and implemented with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Semantic UI framework. Data is stored in MySQL database. For back-end development, Java and Spring Boot framework are used to realize the functions like calculating scores, retrieving data from the database, and rendering results to the front-end pages. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Amy Padilla | Portfolio | Giving Voice to Archival Silences:The Invisible Working Women of the Encyclopdie | The University of Chicago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Division of the Humanities | The ARTFL Project, a collaboration between the French government and the University of Chicago, is a rich archive of digitized French literature with English translations. The Encyclopdie is the crown jewel of the Legacies of The Enlightenment. Labor laws and Guild restrictions of that time forbade women employment. Yet illustrations confirm women were working with men in these forbidden roles. Undocumented, women are not searchable, in effect rendering them silent.I created a finding aid (publication pending) with descriptive introduction and metadata indexing the working women, giving future scholars a more complete understanding of womens historical significance within the workforce. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Amy Padilla | Portfolio | Giving Voice to Archival Silences:The Invisible Working Women of the Encyclopdie | The University of Chicago, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Division of the Humanities, The ARTFL Project | The ARTFL Project, a collaboration between the French government and the University of Chicago, is a rich archive of digitized French literature with English translations. The Encyclopdie is the crown jewel of the Legacies of The Enlightenment. Labor laws and Guild restrictions of that time forbade women employment. Yet illustrations confirm women were working with men in these forbidden roles. Undocumented, women are not searchable, in effect rendering them silent.I created a finding aid (publication pending) with descriptive introduction and metadata indexing the working women, giving future scholars a more complete understanding of womens historical significance within the workforce. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ting Pan | Portfolio | GUI Interface Development for Log Information | Nokia | When a technical document is built by our software, thousands of lines of log information are generated, making it very difficult to distinguish true error messages that are relevant from the 99% of the log that is irrelevant. The project would result in a GUI interface that would allow the end user to view, sort, and filter out the log information, as well as capturing the information in a database for error analytics across all document builds. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ting Pan | Portfolio | GUI Interface Development for Log Information | Nokia | When a technical document is built by our software, thousands of lines of log information are generated, making it very difficult to distinguish true error messages that are relevant from the 99% of the log that is irrelevant. The project would result in a GUI interface that would allow the end user to view, sort, and filter out the log information, as well as capturing the information in a database for error analytics across all document builds. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Elizabeth Peattie | Portfolio | Mapping Peru in the 1920s: Digitizing and Georeferencing Postcards from LLILAS Bensons Hispanic Society of American Postcards Collection | LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collection | From the Bensons Hispanic Society of American Postcards Collection, 223 postcards were digitized showing scenes from 1920s Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, with item-level metadata generated for each postcard based on the MODS and Dublin Core metadata schemas. Using MapWarper, Google Maps, and ArcGIS, I georeferenced the items over a historical 1906 map of Peru. The project culminated into a selection of images centered on themes of flora, fauna, and the indigenous population accessed via Omeka for the Spring 2020 Art History undergraduate course, Art and Archaeology in Peru, to help students contextualize Chimu and Nazca ceramics from the Mesamerican Centers Art & Art History Collection. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Elizabeth Peattie | Portfolio | Mapping Peru in the 1920s: Digitizing and Georeferencing Postcards from LLILAS Bensons Hispanic Society of American Postcards Collection | LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collection | From the Bensons Hispanic Society of American Postcards Collection, 223 postcards were digitized showing scenes from 1920s Peru, Bolivia, and Chile, with item-level metadata generated for each postcard based on the MODS and Dublin Core metadata schemas. Using MapWarper, Google Maps, and ArcGIS, I georeferenced the items over a historical 1906 map of Peru. The project culminated into a selection of images centered on themes of flora, fauna, and the indigenous population accessed via Omeka for the Spring 2020 Art History undergraduate course, Art and Archaeology in Peru, to help students contextualize Chimu and Nazca ceramics from the Mesamerican Centers Art & Art History Collection. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jennifer Perritt | Portfolio | Medicine and Metadata: Building an Open-Source Catalog for the Dell Medical School Library | Dell Medical School Library | In recent years the Dell Medical School Library has acquired a collection of historical textbooks which are often referenced by researchers and historians in the medical community. This collection was never formally cataloged because the library does not share access to the University of Texas Libraries resources. I first assessed the librarys specific needs and availability of funding to select an appropriate open-source ILS, then imported MARC records from the National Library of Medicine and created local metadata for 106 books. The final deliverable for this project is a user-friendly online catalog of the librarys textbook collection with the potential for circulation services in the future. I additionally created a workflow so that the library can continue to add new records and keep their collections updated and accessible for library patrons and students. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jennifer Perritt | Portfolio | Medicine and Metadata: Building an Open-Source Catalog for the Dell Medical School Library | Dell Medical School Library | In recent years the Dell Medical School Library has acquired a collection of historical textbooks which are often referenced by researchers and historians in the medical community. This collection was never formally cataloged because the library does not share access to the University of Texas Libraries resources. I first assessed the librarys specific needs and availability of funding to select an appropriate open-source ILS, then imported MARC records from the National Library of Medicine and created local metadata for 106 books. The final deliverable for this project is a user-friendly online catalog of the librarys textbook collection with the potential for circulation services in the future. I additionally created a workflow so that the library can continue to add new records and keep their collections updated and accessible for library patrons and students. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kate Reagor | Poster | Portfolio | Creating a TexShare e-Resources Usage Data Dashboard for Texas Libraries | Texas State Library and Archives Commission | Libraries are required to maintain data on every service they provide. But though libraries are increasingly expected to supply electronic content in addition to physical, the time and expertise required to collect and process e-resource usage data from a dozen different sources remains beyond the staff capabilities of many smaller libraries: both public and academic. To aid these libraries, I worked with the TexShare Databases program to develop workflows to automate the cleanup of their statewide consortial usage reports and display the data in an online dashboard where libraries can access it in one place, as a single standardized report. (completed Summer 2020) | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project |
| Katharine Samaniego | Digital Collections Development at the Austin Museum of Pop Culture | Austin Museum of Pop Culture | This capstone project at the Austin Museum of Pop Culture (or AusPop) has necessitated a twofold approach, addressing both large- and small-scale projects currently ongoing at the museum. The small scale includes digitizing the Margaret Moser Collection and assessing metadata and exhibition possibilities as applied to individual collections. The larger scale includes assisting with integrating newly-developed virtual museum software that will eventually encompass all of the museums assets. Although that project will carry on long after this capstone project is completed, the composition of a user guide for this process will help standardize future practices for data capture and the application of metadata. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Katharine Samaniego | Digital Collections Development at the Austin Museum of Pop Culture | Austin Museum of Pop Culture | This capstone project at the Austin Museum of Pop Culture (or AusPop) has necessitated a twofold approach, addressing both large- and small-scale projects currently ongoing at the museum. The small scale includes digitizing the Margaret Moser Collection and assessing metadata and exhibition possibilities as applied to individual collections. The larger scale includes assisting with integrating newly-developed virtual museum software that will eventually encompass all of the museums assets. Although that project will carry on long after this capstone project is completed, the composition of a user guide for this process will help standardize future practices for data capture and the application of metadata. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Laurel Schwehr | Portfolio | Insights into Learning Vital Visualization Software on the Job | UT | This study explores the experience of learning software key to a job while in that role. I focus on visualization software in three fields: architecture, user experience design, and geoscience. My insights come from analysis of one-on-one interviews conducted with both primary users of visualization software and their leads who supervise teams contending with members who are learning software on the job. This cross-disciplinary study seeks to reveal current methods in practice and identify opportunities to improve the experience of learning on the job. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Laurel Schwehr | Portfolio | Insights into Learning Vital Visualization Software on the Job | UT | This study explores the experience of learning software key to a job while in that role. I focus on visualization software in three fields: architecture, user experience design, and geoscience. My insights come from analysis of one-on-one interviews conducted with both primary users of visualization software and their leads who supervise teams contending with members who are learning software on the job. This cross-disciplinary study seeks to reveal current methods in practice and identify opportunities to improve the experience of learning on the job. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Karen Scott | Juvenile Nonfiction Reorganization and Refresh | Lake Travis Community Library | This project focuses on reorganizing and refining catalog data for the juvenile non-fiction collection at Lake Travis Community Library. Currently, the section has inconsistent labeling and cataloging, resulting in a collection that is not the most intuitive or searchable for patrons or staff. This project will work with the catalog data and book contents to make new Dewey Decimal numbers if needed, reorganize materials based on changes, and change physical labels on books in the collection to reflect their new location. Making these changes will allow patrons and staff to more easily navigate this area of the collection and find what they need more efficiently. One of the major outcomes of this project is books becoming more grouped together based on subject, allowing a more comprehensive and browsable collection. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Karen Scott | Juvenile Nonfiction Reorganization and Refresh | Lake Travis Community Library | This project focuses on reorganizing and refining catalog data for the juvenile non-fiction collection at Lake Travis Community Library. Currently, the section has inconsistent labeling and cataloging, resulting in a collection that is not the most intuitive or searchable for patrons or staff. This project will work with the catalog data and book contents to make new Dewey Decimal numbers if needed, reorganize materials based on changes, and change physical labels on books in the collection to reflect their new location. Making these changes will allow patrons and staff to more easily navigate this area of the collection and find what they need more efficiently. One of the major outcomes of this project is books becoming more grouped together based on subject, allowing a more comprehensive and browsable collection. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sangita Sharma | Portfolio | Exploring Barriers to Digital Channel Adoption & Improving the Customer Support Experience | AT&T Design Technology | When an AT&T internet customer is faced with a service disruption, calling customer service is often an inevitable and dreaded step in the path to a resolution. AT&T Customer service call volumes have remained high in spite of increasing internet adoption and providing internet customers with digital support channels to facilitate self-service. It is assumed that this continued call volume is driven by a lack of awareness and adoption of digital support options as well as a large cohort of users who genuinely prefer calling. As a part of our continued efforts to improve the customer support experience, I launched a discovery research effort to explore the existing mental model of AT&T internet customers when experiencing a service issue, as well as identifying barriers to self-service and digital channel adoption. Through two remote, unmoderated diary-survey studies I examined customer troubleshooting behaviors in addition to customer experience with AT&Ts current digital support channels, including att.com/support and AT&Ts mobile apps. Based on responses gathered from 69 AT&T internet customers, I discovered that a clear majority of respondents would prefer to avoid calling customer service. Most of this sample are aware of AT&T digital support channels but often find them unhelpful. These findings indicate that content & usability, in addition to awareness and adoption of digital channels, are barriers to successful self-service. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Sangita Sharma | Portfolio | Exploring Barriers to Digital Channel Adoption & Improving the Customer Support Experience | AT&T Design Technology | When an AT&T internet customer is faced with a service disruption, calling customer service is often an inevitable and dreaded step in the path to a resolution. AT&T Customer service call volumes have remained high in spite of increasing internet adoption and providing internet customers with digital support channels to facilitate self-service. It is assumed that this continued call volume is driven by a lack of awareness and adoption of digital support options as well as a large cohort of users who genuinely prefer calling. As a part of our continued efforts to improve the customer support experience, I launched a discovery research effort to explore the existing mental model of AT&T internet customers when experiencing a service issue, as well as identifying barriers to self-service and digital channel adoption. Through two remote, unmoderated diary-survey studies I examined customer troubleshooting behaviors in addition to customer experience with AT&Ts current digital support channels, including att.com/support and AT&Ts mobile apps. Based on responses gathered from 69 AT&T internet customers, I discovered that a clear majority of respondents would prefer to avoid calling customer service. Most of this sample are aware of AT&T digital support channels but often find them unhelpful. These findings indicate that content & usability, in addition to awareness and adoption of digital channels, are barriers to successful self-service. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ritambhara Singh | Portfolio | Enhancing Favor's Merchant Partners' Experience | Favor Delivery | I was exploring Favor's relationships with their restaurant partners for my capstone project. Favor Delivery is growing rapidly and wanted to identify their stance with the merchants amidst all the competition. My focus was on identifying who the merchants are and what are their needs. I conducted generative research through interviews with both the Favor Sales Teams as well as Favors partnered merchants. After completing the interviews I analyzed data to come up with actionable insights that can be used by Favor Delivery in future. Once the data had been synthesized, I worked closely with a couple of Favor's senior product designers, to create some screens for a potential merchant portal. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ritambhara Singh | Portfolio | Enhancing Favor's Merchant Partners' Experience | Favor Delivery | I was exploring Favor's relationships with their restaurant partners for my capstone project. Favor Delivery is growing rapidly and wanted to identify their stance with the merchants amidst all the competition. My focus was on identifying who the merchants are and what are their needs. I conducted generative research through interviews with both the Favor Sales Teams as well as Favors partnered merchants. After completing the interviews I analyzed data to come up with actionable insights that can be used by Favor Delivery in future. Once the data had been synthesized, I worked closely with a couple of Favor's senior product designers, to create some screens for a potential merchant portal. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Mike Slovenski | Automating the Verification of Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) Status of Vendors for the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) | Texas Department of Information Resources | This project automates the process by which HUB status is verified by employees of the DIR. It is necessary to verify the HUB status of vendors when they are listed as subcontractors on subcontracting plans. Because these plans are completed by DIR-contracted vendors and not the DIR, the DIR must verify the accuracy of this information. Historically, DIR employees have been required to manually determine which vendors are listed on these plans and locate listed vendors in an online database in order to verify this information. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Mike Slovenski | Automating the Verification of Historically Underutilized Business (HUB) Status of Vendors for the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) | Texas Department of Information Resources | This project automates the process by which HUB status is verified by employees of the DIR. It is necessary to verify the HUB status of vendors when they are listed as subcontractors on subcontracting plans. Because these plans are completed by DIR-contracted vendors and not the DIR, the DIR must verify the accuracy of this information. Historically, DIR employees have been required to manually determine which vendors are listed on these plans and locate listed vendors in an online database in order to verify this information. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Stephen Spencer | Portfolio | Users' Trust in Indeed and Competitors | Indeed | Trust is an important aspect of any interactions a person takes, and this includes interactions with job searching websites such as Indeed. I developed a survey based on a literature review to measure trust for website like Indeed by aspects of ability, usefulness, ease of use, benevolence, integrity, security and privacy. The survey was sent out in the month of April and followed by analysis of the data. Users trust in Indeed overall was better or similar to its competitors with some differences between users who prefer competitor sites. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Stephen Spencer | Portfolio | Users Trust in Indeed and Competitors | Indeed | Trust is an important aspect of any interactions a person takes, and this includes interactions with job searching websites such as Indeed. I developed a survey based on a literature review to measure trust for website like Indeed by aspects of ability, usefulness, ease of use, benevolence, integrity, security and privacy. The survey was sent out in the month of April and followed by analysis of the data. Users trust in Indeed overall was better or similar to its competitors with some differences between users who prefer competitor sites. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Julia Sufrin | Portfolio | Emerging Technology Toolkits for Texas Public Libraries | TSLAC | The objective of this project was to evaluate the need and interest amongst Texas public library staff for emerging technology resources from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC). My evaluation included a literature review of public library technology toolkit programs from across the country, a survey of Texas public library staff, and a series of focus group sessions with Library Directors. Based on my findings, I determined recommendations for developing an emerging technology toolkit program for TSLAC to share with Texas Public Library staff across the state. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Julia Sufrin | Portfolio | Emerging Technology Toolkits for Texas Public Libraries | TSLAC | The objective of this project was to evaluate the need and interest amongst Texas public library staff for emerging technology resources from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC). My evaluation included a literature review of public library technology toolkit programs from across the country, a survey of Texas public library staff, and a series of focus group sessions with Library Directors. Based on my findings, I determined recommendations for developing an emerging technology toolkit program for TSLAC to share with Texas Public Library staff across the state. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Peidi Sun | Portfolio | Design the ToB Web-based Data Service Platform in Oil & Gas Industry | National Oilwell Varco | The Access NOV is NOVs next-generation data management and visualization platform. It is a collection of multiple applications. Table, Dashboard, Real-Time Viewer, and other apps can satisfy different users needs. I participated in the research and design of two apps: Product Bulletin and WellData. The Product Bulletin is an app that managers can subscribe and track multiple product lines. The WellData app just released the beta version and can allow experts to monitor and analyze drilling data on a browser anywhere in the world. During the internship, I closely collaborated with PM, dev, QA, and other designers. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Peidi Sun | Portfolio | Design the ToB Web-based Data Service Platform in Oil & Gas Industry | National Oilwell Varco | The Access NOV is NOVs next-generation data management and visualization platform. It is a collection of multiple applications. Table, Dashboard, Real-Time Viewer, and other apps can satisfy different users needs. I participated in the research and design of two apps: Product Bulletin and WellData. The Product Bulletin is an app that managers can subscribe and track multiple product lines. The WellData app just released the beta version and can allow experts to monitor and analyze drilling data on a browser anywhere in the world. During the internship, I closely collaborated with PM, dev, QA, and other designers. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ambuj Tiwari | Portfolio | Redesign of The UT Inequality Project Website | University of Texas at Austin | This project will involve the redesign of the current UT Inequality Project (UTIP) website to better reflect the mission and purpose of the UTIP. It also entails building a more robust web architecture for the website that is fully responsive and supports interactive data visualizations for the years of research data stored and collected by the UTIP as a research group. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ambuj Tiwari | Portfolio | Redesign of The UT Inequality Project Website | University of Texas at Austin | This project will involve the redesign of the current UT Inequality Project (UTIP) website to better reflect the mission and purpose of the UTIP. It also entails building a more robust web architecture for the website that is fully responsive and supports interactive data visualizations for the years of research data stored and collected by the UTIP as a research group. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ssu-Ting Wang | Portfolio | Constrafor Procure-to-Pay Software for the Construction Industry | Constrafor | Constrafor aims to transform the way contractors procure withefficient andreliable software solutions, which enable them to efficiently manage andkeeptrack of all bids, as well as create a seamless information flow within the team and with their suppliers. As UX/UI designer, my responsibilities includebuilding information architecture, mapping out the user flows, creatingwireframes, visual design, and click-through prototypes. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ssu-Ting Wang | Portfolio | Constrafora Procure-to-Pay Software for the Construction Industry | Constrafor | Constrafor aimsto transform the way contractors procure withefficient andreliable software solutions, which enable them to efficiently manage andkeeptrack of all bids, as well as create a seamless information flow within the team and with their suppliers. As aUX/UI designer, my responsibilities includebuilding information architecture, mapping out theuser flows, creatingwireframes, visual design, and click-through prototypes. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Brenna Wheeler | Portfolio | Data Curation at the Texas Data Repository | Texas Data Repository | For the Texas Data Repository, I created a data curation workflow based off of the Data Curation Networks CURATE(D) Model to improve the findability and reusability of datasets. The workflow is localized to the Texas Data Repository using needs identified in interviews with academic librarians and my assessment of datasets currently in the repository. My final product is a specialized Data Curation workflow and a list of recommendations that may be used by a team of liaison librarians to curate newly deposited datasets in the future. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Brenna Wheeler | Portfolio | Data Curation at the Texas Data Repository | Texas Data Repository | For the Texas Data Repository, I created a data curation workflow based off of the Data Curation Networks CURATE(D) Model to improve the findability and reusability of datasets. The workflow is localized to the Texas Data Repository using needs identified in interviews with academic librarians and my assessment of datasets currently in the repository. My final product is a specialized Data Curation workflow and a list of recommendations that may be used by a team of liaison librarians to curate newly deposited datasets in the future. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Catherine Whited | Portfolio | Preserving the Blast from the Past | Longhorn Alumni Band | The Longhorn Band Archive is a large collection of documents, photographs, recordings, artifacts, and ephemera amassed over the years by former members of the University of Texas Longhorn Band. The material is spread between the Briscoe Center for American History, the home of the Alumni Band Archives Chair, the Longhorn Band administrative offices, and an air-conditioned storage unit. I visited all these repository sites and created a rough inventory of the types of items stored at each location. I then used this information to develop a comprehensive assessment of the needs of the current collection to ensure its continued preservation. Additionally, I created a deed of gift template and a loan agreement template for future administrative use. I also included instructions for the usage of these forms as well as preservation guidelines for future caretakers of the archive. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Catherine Whited | Portfolio | Preserving the Blast from the Past | Longhorn Alumni Band | The Longhorn Band Archive is a large collection of documents, photographs, recordings, artifacts, and ephemera amassed over the years by former members of the University of Texas Longhorn Band. The material is spread between the Briscoe Center for American History, the home of the Alumni Band Archives Chair, the Longhorn Band administrative offices, and an air-conditioned storage unit. I visited all these repository sites and created a rough inventory of the types of items stored at each location. I then used this information to develop a comprehensive assessment of the needs of the current collection to ensure its continued preservation. Additionally, I created a deed of gift template and a loan agreement template for future administrative use. I also included instructions for the usage of these forms as well as preservation guidelines for future caretakers of the archive. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chiu-Yi (Sherry) Wu | Portfolio | UX Design for a Global Kangaroo Care Contest | The main goal of the Kangaroo Care Contest is to raise awareness within neonatal units to perform Kangaroo Care, and to encourage parents to hold their newborn babies skin-to-skin more often. I designed new features of a baby healthcare tracking app that allows parents to join the Kangaroo Care Contest and track their teams Kangaroo Care performance. By conducted competitive analysis and subject-matter expert interviews, I identified requirements and created artifacts to inform the design. Then, created mockups and prototypes for usability testing. After three iterations, I delivered a hi-fi prototype to the engineering team for implementation. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Chiu-Yi (Sherry) Wu | Portfolio | UX Design for a Global Kangaroo Care Contest | The main goal of the Kangaroo Care Contest is to raise awareness within neonatal units to perform Kangaroo Care, and to encourage parents to hold their newborn babies skin-to-skin more often. I designed new features of a baby healthcare tracking app that allows parents to join the Kangaroo Care Contest and track their teams Kangaroo Care performance. By conducted competitive analysis and subject-matter expert interviews, I identified requirements and created artifacts to inform the design. Then, created mockups and prototypes for usability testing. After three iterations, I delivered a hi-fi prototype to the engineering team for implementation. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jonathon Youssefnia | Portfolio | Texas Digital Library Directory of Skills | Texas Digital Library | The Texas Digital Library (TDL) counts many talented information professionals among its members. The goal of my capstone project has been to facilitate their collaboration by creating a searchable directory of skills. I surveyed librarians, archivists, technologists, developers, and other professionals from the TDL community to gather information about their areas of skill. The provided information was then assembled into a searchable database that will soon be hosted on the TDL website. A maintenance plan for data hygiene is the final component of the project. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jonathon Youssefnia | Portfolio | Texas Digital Library Directory of Skills | Texas Digital Library | The Texas Digital Library (TDL) counts many talented information professionals among its members. The goal of my capstone project has been to facilitate their collaboration by creating a searchable directory of skills. I surveyed librarians, archivists, technologists, developers, and other professionals from the TDL community to gather information about their areas of skill. The provided information was then assembled into a searchable database that will soon be hosted on the TDL website. A maintenance plan for data hygiene is the final component of the project. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Meng Zhang | Portfolio | Texas Wholesaler Distributer Database Capstone | Texas State Board of Pharmacy | For this capstone project, I improve the Texas Wholesaler Distributer Database and achieve the process of partial automation for the Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) of Texas State Board of Pharmacy. Currently, PMP staff manage prescription data manually. This project improves this database by migrating increasing functionality to allow PMP staff the ability to manage and import wholesaler data updates with some level of automation. My work is to develop a website to upload files, validate uploaded files in ARCOS format, inform wholesalers of files upload status and clean out previously loaded files automatically. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Meng Zhang | Portfolio | Texas Wholesaler Distributer Database Capstone | Texas State Board of Pharmacy | For this capstone project, I improve the Texas Wholesaler Distributer Database and achieve the process of partial automation for the Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) of Texas State Board of Pharmacy. Currently, PMP staff manage prescription data manually. This project improves this database by migrating increasing functionality to allow PMP staff the ability to manage and import wholesaler data updates with some level of automation. My work is to develop a website to upload files, validate uploaded files in ARCOS format, inform wholesalers of files upload status and clean out previously loaded files automatically. | Spring 2020 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Robert Anascavage | An Informational Audit of Austin's Office of the City Clerk | The City of Austin | An explorative look at the current state of the City of Austin's Office of the City Clerk's SharePoint information management system. Topics to be covered include a content inventory of their internal and external knowledge base, a review of their upgrade from an on-premise solution (SharePoint 2013) to a cloud-based one (SharePoint Online), and user-based interviews to determine the current usage of SharePoint along with recommendations on how to improve user experience and adoption with SharePoint going forward. In addition to these topics, there will be a review to look back and determine what went well and what lessons were learned during the project. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Ginny Barnes | The Power of the Pocket Computer: Empowering Underserved Austin Communities through Mobile Phone Literacy | Austin Free-Net | As technology evolves exponentially so do the economic, educational, and social inequalities between those who have digital access and literacy skills and those who do not. Austin Free-Net (AFN) is a nonprofit organization in Austin, Texas that provides technology training and computer access to the Austin community, fostering skills that enable people to succeed in the digital age. Digital Literacy Program Manager, Dr. Caroline Stratton, identified a growing need for a mobile literacy curriculum to support AFN patrons with the mobile devices (phones, tablets, etc.) that they use most frequently. My capstone project addresses the gap in the mobile literacy skills of AFN's diverse user populations including people experiencing homelessness, seniors, and English language learners. Through the creation, implementation, and distribution of a mobile literacy curriculum as an open educational resource (OER), my project helps to equip underserved communities with mobile phone survival skills. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Danielle Barraza | The Missing Link: An Evaluation of the Data.gov Catalog | According to the Data.gov website, the 2013 Federal Open Data Policy requires that ?newly-generated government data is required to be made available in open, machine-readable formats?. While data may be made available on the website, the accompanying file links may be broken or unavailable resulting in an inaccessible dataset. Through web scraping techniques, analysis, and resulting visualizations this project seeks to evaluate the accessibility of the datasets made available on the website. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Zacharia Benalayat | Launching & Integrating Digital Scholarship Products: FromThePage | University of Texas Libraries | For this project I embedded within the Digital Scholarship Division at the University of Texas Libraries. I managed the formal launch and integration of a new digital scholarship tool, FromThePage into our suite of tools. I researched other institutions' experience with the platform and identified ideal audiences for this tool. I produced promotional and outreach materials to get faculty and staff to engage with the tool. I also designed and led a workshop in April introducing interested parties to the tool. I focused on how to use it and how it can be used to enhance digital scholarship and instruction. I closed out the project cycle by analyzing the post-workshop user feedback to make recommendations on ways to continue to promote the tool, and offer insights on how to continue to engage users. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Samantha Brown | Creating a Family DVD Collection | Lake Travis Community Library | The goal of my project was to analyze the Lake Travis Community Library's existing DVD collection and assess which DVDs could be relocated into a new collection that is oriented towards families with children under the age of ten. Lake Travis Community Library is located in beautiful Lakeway, Texas and serves the communities of Lakeway, Hudson Bend, The Hills, Spicewood, and Briarcliff with both an 11,000 square foot library building and a bookmobile. To accomplish my goal, I had to relocate other collections to make room for this new Family DVD Collection as there is limited space within the library. After moving these collections and analyzing 3,960 DVDs, I was able to create a collection of 598 titles and give recommendations for future purchases based on needs of the new collection. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kimberley Carmona | Visualizing Latinitas: Creating a Database to Visualize Data for Local Non-Profit | Latinitas | Latinitas is a local non-profit trying to empower young Latinas through media and technology. The organization creates programming to allow girls to get hands-on experience by hosting camps, workshops, conferences, and other events. Seeing the huge impact Latinitas has made on girls in the Austin and El Paso area, it was essential to keep track of data to help the creation and implementation of programming as well as finding sources of income through donors and sponsors. To accomplish this I have cleaned and organized the data in consultation with the program director. The database was created in MySQL on a remote server and Python, PHP, and HTML was used to retrieve and analyze the data. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jeremy Chen | Classroom Web Application Redesign | Classroom web application is a cloud-based digital whiteboarding platform designed specifically for k-12 teachers. It is integrated with ViewBoard to merge the physical and virtual space with on-site touch and online interactive technologies for engaging content creation. Currently, Classroom web application has identified several usability issues during beta testing with informal user testing. Without solid user research findings to inform whether our product meets users? true needs and business requirements and whether our product has a competitive value proposition. This project seeks to go beyond products and features toward a deep understanding of customer value creation. The outcomes of this project allow us to have clear value propositions and a visual interface that directly targets our customers? most pressing and important jobs, pains, and gains. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Yeseul Monica Cho | Service Design Research for Austin Central Library | Austin Public Library (Central) | Austin Central Library is one of the newest, largest, and most futuristic public libraries in the city and has become a major public landmark in the heart of Austin. As it attracts thousands of people of all ages and backgrounds, the library aims to reinforce the overall quality of the public service and innovate by understanding customers? needs, goals, and pain points. Through my project, I explored the library experiences of four primary user groups including students, tourists, business people, and people who are facing homelessness, as well as staff experiences using various qualitative methods to develop service design recommendations and action plans. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Andrew Coles | Postpartum Mood Disorder AI Chatbot | University of Texas at Austin | Postpartum Mood Disorders affect millions of parents annually, impacting not only their lives, but those of their children, friends, and family. Through organizations like PSI (Postpartum Support International), parents have found relief through community, text-based PSI Helpline service, online support groups, and other services. The chatbot will learn from the experiences of real parents, clinicians, volunteers, and PSI staff in order to assist more parents suffering postpartum effects than ever before. This project seeks to understand the issues that are most relevant to the design of the chatbot from the perspective of PSI, as well as the Daily Activity Lab in the UT Psychology Department, as opposed to the other, related projects seeking to understand the issues from the perspective of potential parent-users. The chatbot will only succeed with a thorough understanding of the problem-space inherent in designing a chatbot for such sensitive issues as pregnancy and mental health. To that end, this project will establish a firm foundation, using such elements of the UX toolkit as user research and interviewing, design-focused thinking, and prototyping. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jiachao Fang | Stance Classification in Social Media Using Machine Learning Techniques | Stance classification has been a popular research topic. The target of my research is to build a model to classify post stance in social media, which can later be used to determine the veracity of rumors in social media. My research mainly consists four parts: related work review, baseline reproduction, model exploration and optimization, and results and analysis. All the posts are classified into four categories: support, deny, query and comment. I first tried to reproduce the baseline. Then, I explored and evaluated the performances of different models, and tried to improve the model by adding new features. Finally, I summarized the results and gave future research directions. | Spring 2019 | Master's Report/Thesis | |||
| Erin Finley | Regarding Cancer Website Redesign | Regarding Cancer | Regarding Cancer (Re:Cancer) is a local non-profit organization that provides support programs in Central Texas for those impacted by the disease, including patients and caregivers. Prospective Re:Cancer care receivers and volunteers have difficulty navigating the current website and understanding the resources available, which often leads to less participation. This project aimed to increase involvement in the Re:Cancer community by redesigning the website to better fit the needs of its users. It consisted of four phases: research, analysis, design and evaluation. The first and second phases included conducting and evaluating market research and user research in order to better understand the cancer care journey from multiple perspectives. The third and fourth phases included iterative prototyping and usability testing in order to make changes effectively and efficiently. The final product consists of a high-fidelity prototype and recommendations for further design that Re:Cancer can implement in the future. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Leslie Flynn | APL Studios: Summer Film School for Teens | Austin Public Library, Central Branch | When schools are out for the summer, Austin Public Library (APL) sees an influx of visiting teenagers. APL uses this opportunity to create teen-centric programming to provide these young adults with something to do while building social, literacy, and technical skills. For summer 2019, I created a summer-long film school for APL Central to offer their teen customers. It will consist of six masterclasses taught by professional filmmakers and weekly lab hours for teens to collaborate on one of three film projects. It will culminate in a screening of the films at the Austin Film Society's theatre in August. Despite sudden budget changes, slow-to-respond vendor partners, and an unexpected staff reorganization, I created a program plan, development resources, book displays, troubleshooting guide, and associated marketing to allow APL to successfully put on this series of programs. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jennifer Follen | Digital Archiving and Website Design for Ethnographic Terminalia | For this project, I helped to build a digital archive and website redesign for Ethnographic Terminalia, a curatorial collective comprised of faculty members at American and Canadian universities. The archive makes ten years of exhibitions combining anthropological research and artworks available to the public. The resulting website design synthesizes the creative goals and processes of self-motivated individuals into a relational web true to the collective's concept of alternative forms of representation and learning. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Kathleen Forrest | Conceptualizing Preservation: A Case Study Using Emulation Tools on the Chora of Metaponto, The Necropoleis | In 1998, the Institute of Classical Archeology published the Chora of Metaponto: The Necropoleis, a two volume book that represented over twenty years of archeological research and scholarship. This paper describes how graduate students in Dr. Galloway's Digital Archiving class, working together with the ICA, utilized emulation as a tool for recovering data in obsolete legacy formats for long term preservation and increased digital access. This paper analyses their process and presents the project's two objectives?preservation and access?from within two separate conceptual frameworks and demonstrates how they can come into conflict in practice. Awareness of the different frameworks can give future archivists greater control and streamline the process for similar projects. | Spring 2019 | Master's Report/Thesis | |||
| Lu Gan | UT Austin Faculty Diversity | Executive Vice President & Provost | My capstone is focusing on making data visualization and content-related work for Vice Provost for Diversity at UT Austin. In line with the requirements of my field supervisor, Dr. Edmund T. Gordon, I have three main projects. First, I have created a university-wide diversity dashboard for easy use and quick browsing experience that includes data regarding gender and racial/ethnic categories, as well as comparisons concerning peer institutions. Second, similar to the university-wide dashboard, I have also created a college-level faculty diversity dashboard regarding gender and racial/ethnic categories and median age of faculty members. Third, I have created tenure promotion process for five and ten years, respectively. In the next step, I will review the existing website contents and make recommendations as to how the university can more effectively provide diversity information to interested users. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sarah Gardner | Check It Out!: Increasing Visibility, Findability, and Participation Within a Community Library | The SEED Adult and Family Learning Community | Organizational systems are critical to the visibility and findability of library materials. The SEED Adult and Family Learning Community works with individuals learning English as a second, or other, language. Their vision is "creating a space wherein community members" negotiate meaning in physical, cultural, emotional, social, linguistic, artistic, and individual contexts?. I organized the SEED's library, a collection of over a thousand items, using a mix of Dewey Decimal classification and genrefication, assessed the quality of these materials, and removed outdated items. I created catalog records for the collection using LibraryThing, a collaborative web application. After conducting a survey to learn about the community's interests, I compiled ideas for using the materials to facilitate learning, including using the images or text from outdated or damaged materials to tell stories through zine making. I conducted an orientation and provided documentation, a collection development policy and guides, to help the community continue to develop their library. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sonakshi Garg | Predictive Modelling and Automating the Quarterly Financial Analysis | PeopleFund | As a Data Analyst Intern, my responsibilities included collecting and analyzing the quarterly financial and business data for PeopleFund's clients. I automated the quarterly reporting by creating a standard Excel template and using some advanced functions to manipulate, calculate and auto-populate data, thus reducing errors and manual efforts. Additionally, to determine the urgency of follow-up required, I also created categories to automatically assign a risk rating to each client. I was further able to analyze the correlation between the features and generate multiple models to predict the outcomes using Predictive Modelling techniques. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Miriam Goff | Collection Management of Lake Travis Community Library Youth Non-Fiction and Chapter Book Sections | Lake Travis Community Library | Two areas of the Lake Travis Community Library youth collection were analyzed and reorganized to better serve the needs of their library community. I created documentation for processing procedures, authority lists, local rules, and organization schema to establish standards and ensure fidelity in the youth non-fiction and chapter book sections. The procedure for updating metadata and relabeling was established and standardized when the chapter book section was processed. The updated taxonomy of the non-fiction section required the creation of local rules to generate subject grouping that would facilitate easier topic browsing by patrons. Throughout the process of bolstering efficient location of items by patrons and staff, I consulted with the cataloging and collection development librarians to create procedures and standards that would easily integrate with their procedures for collection management. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Yifan Gong | Enhancing Touch Interactions with Passive Finger Acoustics | In this report, we design and implement a new multi-finger input technique for touch-screen devices. The idea is that while the index finger is engaged in a touch event, a user can use ring-like devices on his/her thumb and index finger to create sounds to interact with the device. The collision sounds between different materials can be captured by the microphone on cellphones or tablets and classified by a pre-trained machine learning model. | Spring 2019 | Master's Report/Thesis | |||
| Birch Griesse | Mediating Conflicting Values in a Community Archive Setting | This report examines conflicts within the user community of the online fanwork repository Archive of Our Own (AO3). The site is a nonprofit venture with the ambitious goal of serving the large heterogeneous community of fandom writ large. Tensions among subsets of the Archive's user group have flared up at various points in its ten-year history, forcing its volunteer-based staff into the position of arbiter of community values. These conflicting values have influenced, sometimes asymmetrically, the functionality of the Archive and are now embedded in its design. Focusing on tensions in three broad categories delineated by the user groups in conflict, this report explores the effect the compromises have had on AO3's goals of inclusivity, preservation, and access. | Spring 2019 | Master's Report/Thesis | |||
| Sifan Guo | Blockchain for Memories | As a blockchain per se is an immutable distributed ledger, it's a suitable database to record moments that we never want to forget. Wonderful moments can be immutable in a blockchain and will never be forgotten. This project will determine what should be recorded and how this information can be presented by conducting surveys. Besides, this project will provide access to this blockchain via a website. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Andrea Gutiérrez | Strategic Analysis of Latino Cancer Patient Experience | University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio | The cancer patient experience is unique to healthcare because patients are often informed at a high-level of their diagnosis, and there is also a strict adherence to treatment. This is paralleled only by patients with other illnesses that effect the quality or duration of life. The Latino cancer patient experience is even more distinctive because of the unique needs and challenges for Latinos in healthcare. Through interviews with subject matter experts, a comprehensive literature review, and comparative analysis, Gutirrez identifies pain points and opportunities in the Latino cancer patient experience. These observations will be used to recommend a strategy for May's Cancer Center at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, where a high population of Latino cancer patients are served. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Grant Hardaway | Creating a Consumer Health Resource Guide for the Dell Medical School | For this project, I created a consumer health resource guide for a new learning space at the Dell Medical School. This space, titled the Learning Lounge, is a grant-funded project to provide additional information resources to patients at Dell's various clinics. Based on the feedback of clinicians, librarians, and design students, I developed the guide into a wide-ranging resource that helps patients locate information on a variety of health-related topics and services in the Austin area. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Raychel Hardy | Government Information: A Journey of Documents and Guides | University of Texas at Austin Libraries | Government information documents and guides have not been accessible through the UT Libraries website since research guides migrated over to the LibGuide system. This capstone project focused on fixing that discrepancy by creating new LibGuides for several topics under the government information umbrella. Topics such as historical census data and the electoral college, along with others, now have LibGuides that are accessible to library users, especially students, as a place to start their own research. Because LibGuides are utilized mainly by students, I have been focusing on the areas of government documents and information that are of interest and will be utilized by students. To do this, I have been collaborating with my field supervisors to better understand the needs of students and other interested parties. Near the end of this semester, I will be presenting a training to library staff on the government documents I have been working with so that they will be better equipped to help students and other patrons on a day to day basis. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Tabitha Henderson | The Demigod Files: Teen Archives Program | The Wittliff Collections-Texas State University | In collaboration between the Seguin Public Library and The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, I gained experience designing and leading a teen services program named The Demigod Files. The program was centered around the author, Rick Riordan's various young adult series which are based on diverse mythologies. This collaboration was an effort to cultivate an interest, in teens from the ages of 11-19, in archives by creating a connection between their favorite series and the Wittliff Collections' Rick Riordan Papers. Through the program, the teens were provided opportunities to learn about archives while viewing and handling materials from the archival collection. This capstone was an irreplaceable experience that prepared me with skills that are valuable in conducting future outreach programs within the field. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Priscila Hernandez | University of Texas at Austin Records Retention Schedule (UTRRS) Recertification Project | University of Texas Records and Information Management Services | A record is one of the most important, strategic assets organizations possess. Records Retention Schedules (RRS) is a policy that provides detailed guidance on requirements for how to retain every record created, received, used, and stored by any organization. As it is a state agency, the University of Texas at Austin is required by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC), the state of Texas' archive, to submit its RRS for recertification every 5 years. Especially for large agencies with numerous divisions and departments, the recertification process can be lengthy. For this project, I worked with UT Austin's Records and Information Management Program Officer to complete the first phase of UTRRS recertification which is due in September of 2019. Phase 1 included meeting with university departments and conducting research and review of past and current UTRRS to discover any new or discontinued university business practices or any legal or regulatory changes that affect retention periods for an area. Ultimately, my analysis sets the foundation for which updates to the UTRRS the Records and Information Management Services team will recommend. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Mallory Hill | Mapping the Bazaarvoice Ecosystem | Bazaarvoice | Merging my preexisting UX knowledge with new Service Design knowledge, picked up during my time with Bazaarvoice (BV), I spent five months mining data from BV's internal-system and conducting over 80 one-on-one interviews with employees located all over the world. Mapping the BV Ecosystem was a process of analyzing the data collected for the key responsibilities and dependencies of each department and subdivision. In turn, I produced a comprehensive visual that enables users to: 1.Identify entities and connections2.Identify partnerships (existing and potential)3.Reveal all the points of interaction4.Investigate existing or potential internal relationships5.Explore new strategies by reorganizing how entities relate to one anotherA tool that provides, not only employees, but leadership with much needed visibility into the operations of their organization, the Bazaarvoice Ecosystem Map has aided in both the onboarding of new employees and informing HR's Head of significant change-impacts. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Juejun Huang | Student Perception About Teamwork | The University of Texas at Austin, The School of Undergraduate Studies | This capstone project is to study UT students? perceptions about teamwork. Specifically, by extracting responses from surveys about collaboration, I am going to study which factors can affect UT students' attitudes towards working as a group. The project is to serve the purpose of the capstone of my master degree, and it will also gather information and related analysis to one of the goals of UT Austin's Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP). The project is divided into three parts. The first part studies whether students with different ethnicities have different perceptions about teamwork. The second part studies whether different types of teamwork assignments influence UT students' perceptions about working with others. The third part is based on part one and part two to conduct a deeper analysis. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Peace Iyiewuare | Internet of Things & UX: Automating Usability Testing with Smart Home Devices | University of Texas at Austin | The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming increasingly prevalent as companies like Amazon and Google continue to develop smart home devices and voice assistants. However, they are in a phase where they exist, but there is little experimentation with, or practical use for these devices. My capstone project is an attempt to find a space where these devices can be used. I want to build a program to moderate usability testing, which includes recording responses and potentially analyzing responses on the backend. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Fnu Jasleen | Automated Database Recorder | Infrastructure creation for automated database recorder in Python. MySQL database is being used that will organize the data extracted directly from hardware and will give the visual output. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Allison Joffrion | For the Record: A Survey of Digital Repositories at UT | UT Records and Information Management Services | This project serves as an overview of the landscape of digital repositories at The University of Texas at Austin and a first step in developing a data map for better knowledge management of university records and information. Through provider interviews and existing documentation, it examines the current state of repositories used by business units on campus, serves as the foundation for a set of recommendations for workflows and best practices, and gathers information that can help stakeholders plan for the future of their document storage and management. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kaley Jones | Abbye ?Pudgy? Stockton Online Exhibit | H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports | Pudgy Stockton is a key figure of the H.J. Lutcher Stark Center's archival collections as one of the most well-known founders of Muscle Beach along with her husband, Les. This capstone project used the Pudgy and Les Stockton collection at the Stark Center to create an online exhibit about Pudgy Stockton and highlight her influence on women in weightlifting and physical culture. The online exhibit, containing over 100 photos from the collection and a narrative of Pudgy's life and influence, lives on the Stark Center's upcoming website where it is housed alongside other features of main figures from their collections. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Dylan Kreis | A Typology of Online Labor Platforms | Online labor platforms, such as Uber, hold the potential to transform the nature of employment. As the number of platforms continue to grow, the same term (platform) is being used to describe an increasingly large number of services, which belies much of the variability in their nature. This typology serves to identify the important ways in which the platforms are similar, and in what ways they diverge. Understanding the differences between platforms can help researchers uncover the ways these differences make a difference to the nature of work on the platforms. This typology identifies and studies the attributes of 10 prominent types of platforms: Transportation, Microwork, Housework, Hospitality, Delivery, Therapy, Video, Freelance, Commerce, and Long-term Employment platforms. Additionally, this paper compares the platforms to their real-life counterparts in order to identify in what ways the platforms represent new forms of work. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Rodrigo Leal | UX and Archives: Designing a Digital Resource Portal for the Benson Latin American Collection | LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collection | This poster will highlight the development of a resource portal comprised of special collection materials from the Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. As a tool for K-12 teachers and pre-service students in UT's College of Education Urban Teachers Social Studies program, the resource portal hosts lesson plans for various subjects across the field of Latin American studies. Project steps included designing the site, developing a digital asset management plan, and conducting usability tests, both to shape the development process and to ensure that the finished portal appropriately meets user needs. This poster will detail process, findings, finished products, and provide an example of how archives can leverage digital spaces to better engage with specific audiences as well as the general public?making the case for a growing need for dedicated design/UX professionals in archives to assist in designing and maintaining digital archives. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Aimee Yun-Fang Lin | Redesign Austin Public Library?s Online Shared Learning Room Reservation System | Currently, Austin Public Library is experiencing some problems for the online meeting system, especially there are 2 kinds of room types; shared learning room and meeting room in the library. However, the users do not know the differences between these two. Besides, for the scheduling page, when users open the timetable, they can only see the booked room, it is more difficult for them to find an available room using the timetable. In this capstone project, I work with the Austin Public Library to conduct generative research on the current booking experiences and to redesign the online "shared learning room reservation? system for better online booking experiences. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Chi Lin | Improving Sales for Houzz Inc.'s Marketplace Department Via Small Design Changes | Houzz Inc. | Conversion rate is crucial to e-commerce. E-commerce platforms want to convert as much as possible of number of visitors into sales. Some factors such as better layouts or user experience can lead to a better conversion rate. However, in the real world, there are no best paradigms for designing a high conversion rate page. In the industry, the most popular way to gain a better user interference is by testing the original/new designs at same time, called AB test. This method could minimize the bias. My project presents several AB tests result of Houzz Inc.'s marketplace web page. We find that a small design difference of a page could lead a huge impact for the sales. Although most of the AB test results in this project show less than 5% difference, 5% means millions of dollars in sales changes for a mid-large size company. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Chia-Hui Liu | Information Retrieval and Exploratory Analysis on US Patents | The University of Texas at Austin - UT Libraries | As one of the most large-scale library systems in Texas, UT Libraries has been thriving at collecting metadata and files via various open sources to provide more data insights and access to users. In addition, the University of Texas at Austin has been encouraging students and faculty in innovation by providing tremendous resources. However, the UT Library does not have a repository for sharing all the patents related to the University of Texas at Austin itself, which bothers users who search relevant patents on the messy US patent website. Hence, the goal for this project aims at helping the Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Texas at Austin to retrieve all the patent information relevant to UT Austin and build a database and store the crawled results to provide users with a more effective searching experience using Python and relevant data science techniques. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Xinyue Liu | Chatbot Design for a Reporting Website | Chatbot is valued in business to improve product service by providing better instructions for users. The UT Austin report giving website is the most important way for the Reporting, Analytics, and Data team to provide insights to the University's Development. The team is performing a major change in presenting productive information to the Development Office and they realize the importance of facilitating information access and automating information request. Therefore, a chatbot embedded in the reporting website is largely appreciated. I started by interviewing different groups of users to understand their experience and needs with the reporting tool, and I created workflows between users and the reporting tool. I used Jobs to Be Done framework to analyze the chatbot's opportunities and diagramed a new workflow integrating the chatbot. I designed prototypes and tested them using the Wizard-of-Oz method. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Samantha Lowrance | Digitization of Photos within Documents at the Texas Archaeological Research Lab | UT Austin Development Office | I worked on the Works Progress Administration records from the 1930s at the Texas Archaeological Research Lab (TARL). Some of the records had been previously digitized but there were gaps in the records. The records themselves were inconsistent with naming conventions. TARL wanted to have a standardized way to digitize and name photos that volunteers could follow and would help eliminate error. My project focused almost exclusively on photos since many documents had physical photos attached to them. I created a workflow and naming convention for digitizing photos that were embedded in documents. This will help current and future efforts to digitize projects at TARL. I also went through the previously digitized photographs and renamed them to fit the current naming convention as best as it could be. I also helped set up future projects and what would be a good scope for those projects. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Nicole Lumpkins | Night of the Living Collection | Harry Ransom Center | The Harry Ransom Center has been building its phenomenal collections since, essentially, 1957 while preserving and providing access to these materials in an effort to encourage discovery, education, and understanding in its visitors. But what is the point if none of these materials can be found? The books just sit in their stacks, fading, never to be requested and looked upon. If a collection lives or dies based on whether or not you can find it, then my project's intent is to inject renewed life into the Ransom Center's book collection. The description and access team and curatorial division of the Early Books and Manuscripts Department have embarked on a kind of excavation to pull books from their stacks and re-catalog them with a focus on their unique features. This capstone project was to work with that team and, utilizing their new system of cataloging, create a clear and succinct online research guide to communicate the best search methods for finding the books in the UT Austin Libraries Catalog. By helping researchers find books in the Ransom Center's collections, this research guide hopes to never really let those collections die. This time, you'll be coming to get them! | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Alejandra Martinez | Long Dark Roads: Processing the Ricardo Ainslie Papers | The LLILAS Benson Latin American Collection | For my capstone project, I undertook the task of processing the Ricardo Ainslie Papers at the LLILAS Benson Latin American Collection. Dr. Ricardo Ainslie is a University of Texas professor, psychologist, author, and documentary filmmaker whose work touches on various topics such as the Mexican Drug War, hate crimes, and life in Texas. Throughout his work, Dr. Ainslie explores the psychology of immigration, racial conflict within communities, and the ties between collective and individual identity across disciplines. Over the course of the past semester, I?ve worked and sorted through the hybrid collection of paper and A/V materials with care and have arranged them into an order accessible for researchers. In the end, I?ve gained a better grasp at what traditional archival processing is like on a day-to-day basis. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Gabriela Alejandra Martinez | Information Literacy Toolkit for 21st Century Learners | Doss Elementary School | Acquisition and development of information literacy skills are contingent upon the collaboration of school librarians, educators and parents. Currently, the information literacy resources marketed by Doss Elementary School are decentralized and not easily accessible to users. The purpose of this capstone is to consolidate these resources in an information literacy toolkit for the parents and educators at Doss. The toolkit provides access to literature, resources, and strategies that support best practices for the development of information literacy skills. This includes information on key concepts, learning outcomes, and tools necessary for attaining these lifelong skills. A preliminary information literacy survey was sent to parents and educators at Doss to determine perceptions of the value of information literacy. Data harvested from the survey was used to develop criteria for evaluating the efficacy and usability of sources. Sources provided by Doss were evaluated according to the abovementioned criteria and P21's Framework for 21st Century Learners. This capstone project utilizes the role of teacher-librarians as the nexus between information literacy and cross-content learning. Additionally, it demonstrates the role of educators and parents in the development of young people's information literacy skills and optimizes these skills in non-academic and academic settings so that they may effectively and enthusiastically participate in life, work, and citizenship. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kunjan Mehta | CARE - Compassion App for Resiliency and Empathy | Simulation and Game Applications (SAGA) Lab | CARE is an iOS app designed to enhance self-care and resiliency for graduate medical students. SAGA Lab (UT), in collaboration with UT Dell Medical, is motivated to reduce the stress experienced by students. The app provides healthcare tips, event notifications, and student resources both online and on-campus. During the research phase, I interviewed 6 medical students. The prototypes have been tested with 5 participants in each phase. The Application is under development phase of version 1.0. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Courtney Meissner | Public Library Partnership with Art Classes at Local High School | New Braunfels Public Library | I have partnered with Joy Hill, Art Teacher at a local high school to put together a book-themed art show with the work her students made. After the show, all pieces will be sold to raise money for the library through the Friends of the Library group at the New Braunfels Public Library. The art students were specifically interested in helping out a library as a community service project through their class. I have also cataloged and photographed all art pieces (well over 100) at the request of the Library Director Gretchen Pruett. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Diana Mendoza | Iterative Usability Testing of Online Resource for People Experiencing Homelessness | Austin Free-Net | The goal of this capstone was to help Austin Free-Net test and redesign a website they created for people experiencing homelessness. The website gathers information about work, health, housing, transportation, and more into one place, resulting in a large amount of content and external links that can easily overwhelm users. The wide range of educational backgrounds, literacy levels, and states of mental health requires that the website information architecture and layout be as intuitive as possible. To do this, I conducted usability testing at the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless (ARCH), made design edits based on the participants? feedback, then used the RITE method (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation) to validate my designs and conclude the project with recommendations for Austin Free-Net to consider for future phases of the website. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sara Merrifield | Virtual Reality Application in a Jail Setting | Dell Medical School | Prior research has suggested that individuals with substance abuse who are incarcerated often relapse after being released from jail. This research study explored the acceptance of virtual reality use in a jail setting and ultimately, its application in rehabilitation as it relates to a variety of topics including mindfulness, community reentry, and substance abuse. Dell Medical School and the Travis County Correctional Facility screened inmates who were willing to participant and met certain criteria, including a history of substance abuse. 20 participants were interviewed which included 10 male and 10 female inmates. Prior to the interview, they were given a series of questionnaires to gather information on demographics and substance abuse patterns. The participants completed two activities using the virtual reality equipment and were asked a series of pre-test and post-test questions to understand their perceptions and experiences with the technology. The School of Information and Dell Med previously collaborated to better understand the population with opioid addiction and how technology may help these individuals. This research on virtual reality expands on those previously unanswered questions and uncovers virtual reality's potential application with rehabilitating high-risk populations. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Miaomiao Niu | Texas Library Association Presenter Database | Texas Library Association | Texas Library Association Presenter Database capstone project is to construct a searchable database which could be consulted by the Texas library community for presenters. This project includes working with Texas Library Association staff to develop criteria for inclusion in the database, establishing parameters for new presenter database, developing communications for inviting presenters to join, and adding presenters from Texas Library Association event records and other sources. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Abigail Norris | Mapping Memphis: A Digital Humanities Analysis of Place Building in Memphis, Tennessee | Rhodes College | "Mapping Memphis" is a digital humanities project analyzing the ways in which urban landscape mirrors a century of social change in Memphis, Tennessee. The project uses extant geographic data in the funeral home ledgers of T. H. Hayes & Sons Funeral Home, the oldest African-American owned business in Memphis, to map the locations of African-Americans? homes, offices, churches, and social spaces from 1910-1919. By comparing this data to a map of modern-day Memphis, "Mapping Memphis" reveals the extent of place building and urban transformation, allowing an exploration of how that development reflects or erases the city's history of segregation, social activism, and Southern culture. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jennifer Nwaogwugwu | Depression Screening App for Expecting and New Parents | University of Texas at Austin | Depression is a serious mental health issue that affects millions of Americans. Many of these Americans go untreated due to lack of awareness. Moreover, in America there is a negative social stigma that comes with the label "depression". When paired with the additional burden of being a new parent, many sufferers don't, or won't, want to open up about their emotional state. This app aims to help increase parents' awareness of depression during the pregnancy term. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Omkar Pandit | Implementation of Machine Learning Techniques to Solve Real-World Problems in Automotive Repair Space | CarServ Inc. | CarServ is the operating system for the automotive repair industry, powered by machine learning. The objective of this project is to first identify the key areas where machine learning can be applied to CarServ datasets to solve problems facing repair facilities and then to apply machine learning solutions to solve it in a more sophisticated way. Now CarServ has gathered great historical data around the repair process and want to implement machine learning techniques to draw fruitful insights from that data and to do better improvements in existing solutions. Some of the highlighted tasks that I have undertaken are, building recommendation systems based on market price data and history repair data using supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques, building a prediction system to predict repair service timeline based on CarServ's history of customer service data, and implementing Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze customer reviews to improve on lacking areas based on customer feedback. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Akshat Parakh | Application of Data Derived Results to Drive Business Strategies | Partify.co | Partify is a digital event planning company. As a Data Science and Business Operations Intern, I was responsible for analyzing web-analytics data and work to improve the communication funnel. This in turn increased the visiting rate of the website. As a result, I had the opportunity to create a dashboard to display all the key performance indicators. This resulted in better understanding of the manner in which the services where being ordered. After analyzing the results presented on the dashboard, I decided to propose an expansion strategy. My work has helped the company improve their design, increased customer conversion and provided them a strategy for future expansion. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Barkha Patel | AT&T's Customer Install & Repair Experience | AT&T Design Technology Organization | AT&T contacts internet and TV customers several times through various forms of messaging before a scheduled install or repair technician appointment. While well received, there are a number of opportunities for improving the end-to-end customer experience. In addition, following the installation, customers may experience a number of troubleshooting-related issues while using their services. Many of these can be solved through better customer-focused service solutions. In this area, we focus on different solutions empowering the customers to solve issues easily and seamlessly. As a whole, these two efforts focus on exploring end-customer needs in these two spaces and will support the design and development of potential solutions for the user experience involving multiple AT&T stakeholders. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Megan Pearson | Tracking Prescription Adherence in Electronic Medical Records | University of Texas School of Information | Over 50% of patients are non-adherent and do not take their medications, causing $100 billion in lost revenue and harming patient health. With the use of med-ALs, a machine learning algorithm, clinicians can view the likelihood of a patient's non-adherence and see the top contributing factors for their non-adherence. The purpose of this fifteen-week project is to create a proof-of-concept prototype that shows this information and appropriate patient education tools in an already-existing electronic medical record. The project workflow included two parts: the first part included user research, such as a literature review, comparative analysis, multiple modeling techniques, personas, and workflows. The second part pivoted to user design and rapid iterative test evaluation (RITE) testing, which allowed for an agile redesign process. The resulting prototype and report were handed off to the client at the culmination of the project. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Park "Blake" Pearson | A Tale of Two Libraries | Henry B. Gonzalez Elementary School | I completed my School Library Practicum of 160 hours at E.T. Wrenn Middle School and Henry B. Gonzalez Elementary School in the Edgewood Independent School District in San Antonio. During my library practicum I have gained valuable knowledge through a wide range of experiences. I have learned that there is more to a librarian than knowing the Dewy Decimal System and that a librarian wears many hats: Instructional Partner, Information Specialist, Literacy Programmer, Collection Developer, and Program Administrator. I have been able to participate in a Book Fair, be a judge for the Battle of the Bluebonnet Books, create a school wide contest highlighting National Women's History month, celebrate Shakespeare Week by promoting and encouraging students to read selected books on display, and collaborate with teachers with small group reading interventions and read aloud. In order for the students who participated in the Battle of the Bluebonnet Books to reflect on their learning and experience, I created a Flipgrid template for the district to use. In addition, I have created several videos to use as trailers/teasers to get students excited about reading books that maybe unfamiliar to them. Finally, I had the opportunity to be a member of the Technology Improvement Leadership Team to help draft the districts 2019-2020 Technology Plan. | Spring 2019 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Victoria Pena | To Be or Not to Be: a School Librarian | Becker Elementary School Library | As my final semester at the iSchool approached, I asked myself: what will give me a holistic experience in the field of librarianship? Librarians have multi-faceted jobs which traditional capstone projects only focus on a detailed part. My experience includes working at an academic and public library but not a public school library. Spending my days at the Becker Elementary School Library shadowing and learning from Bilingual Librarian Minda Anderson I experienced the gauntlet of duties school librarians perform both with students and behind the shelves. Reader's advisory, collection development, and faculty collaboration are a few of the tasks in which I assisted Minda. Flexibility and resourcefulness are tantamount to success for a school librarian to manage and curate the learning environment their time at the school has created. I witnessed the challenges and rewards of being a school librarian, and the memories that stand out the most are about connections I made with the students. The daily interactions with kids and sharing my love of reading with them remain at the front of my mind when I think about working in a school library. | Spring 2019 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Caroline Pendleton | Getting on the Same Page: An Analysis of TLA?s Vendor Relations Practices and the Future of the Library Services Industry | Texas Library Association | This project examines the Texas Library Association's vendor relations practices in relation to comparable organizations, including those in library services and educational technology. To get a better sense of TLA's positioning in this market space, I undertake several activities, including: identifying the total addressable market for Texas libraries; compiling competitive analyses of TLA's pricing and marketing copy for partner relations; surveying first-time and recurring vendors at TLA to determine motivations for exhibiting; and compiling case studies on emerging trends in the library services market space. Results include a SWOT analysis of the TLA's vendor relations practices, crystal ball predictions for the future of library services, and recommendations for improving marketing copy and forming and maintaining relationships with vendors. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Lindsey Phillips | Enhancing the Library Experience in the Middle School Setting | From the onset, my main goal (and my main directive from both my campus principal and my district library director) was to get more people into the library. Previously Wiley Middle School had not offered many special programming opportunities. By far, my most popular program to date has been the Harry Potter Readathon fundraiser! My vision for my library is to create a Learning Commons for the library; a multipurpose/multi use space that can be enjoyed by all! There is sill a lot of work to be done in the library (continuing to weed collections and rearranging furniture), but I believe I am headed in the correct direction! Throughout the practicum I have gained invaluable knowledge and experience. As a literacy programmer I have offered monthly programs and activities to welcome students into the Library. As a library program administrator and and collection developer, I have maintained a budget, purchased new materials and cataloged them. I have collaborated with educators on my campus to teach students about digital literacy and created lesson plans to assist with their unit plans as both an information specialist and instructional partner. As a school librarian, I try everyday to ensure that students and staff alike on my campus have access to award winning materials, meaningful and relevant programming, as well as a friendly face to welcome them into the library. | Spring 2019 | School Library Practicum | |||
| Yifei Qiu | Comparative Analysis of UT Health?s Cancer Center and MD Anderson | Leander Independent School District | UT Health San Antonio has recently entered into a new partnership with UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. The existing website for the UT Health San Antonio Cancer Center need to be updated to support this new combined organization. I will gain a deep understanding of their overall experience strategy, how that strategy is reflected in their digital presence and approach, and conduct comprehensive comparative analysis between these two institutions, which could help to rebuild the website to truly align with the strategic direction and patient experience model that this new partnership will bring. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Thomas Richter | Preserving SXSW Video Archives | SXSW | As the South by Southwest international media conference continues to develop and expand its library of media grows with it. With video captured of many of the performances and lectures from each passing year, they are developing an ever-burgeoning media archive. My work was driven by the need to establish a working inventory of their audiovisual media and to appropriately catalog all relevant data, as well as to use said data to help assess and prioritize media for digitization as necessary. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Drew Roberson | Reconciling the Harry Ransom Center's Name Authority File | Harry Ransom Center | For this project, I worked with the Harry Ransom Center's Name Authority File (HRCnaf) with the objectives of cleaning up local authorities from duplicates, standardizing preferred forms of the names following the developed RDA guidelines, and identifying undifferentiated or legacy names. This entailed reconciling preferred and variant names and linking URIs for data with external sources. According to the HRCnaf project charter, "While the HRC has a well-documented and structured Name Authority Database, data aggregations from several sources, the use of different descriptive standards, and the addition of new fields throughout the time has led to inconsistent or incomplete authority data" Thus, this project helped transform the HRC Name Authorities Database into an efficient access and discovery tool. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jayeeta Roy | NLP Based Content Moderation Solution | Bazaarvoice Inc | The objective of this project is to improve the modeling of tagged consumer generated content (e.g., Product Reviews) for downstream analytics and data mining. One of the primary goals of the project will be content tagging for Product Flaws, Product Suggestions, Shipping Issues, and Customer Service issues. I will be using various NLP techniques to process raw data and prepare the dataset. Once the dataset is prepared, I will use classification techniques, Machine learning and deep learning models for content analysis. This project work will use Python and SQL languages. Final project report will contrast different methodologies, so that we can choose the best solution for a given content tag. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Mandy Ryan | Too DAM Much: Addressing Product Expansion Within a Corporate DAM | YETI | YETI's recent growth in product lines has resulted in a large number of digital assets that contain retired or discontinued products. YETI wanted a way to tag and organize these assets to produce more refined search results and to separate retired products from assets containing current or new products. For my project, I worked to create a category that will help the DAM librarian to better tag and identify these assets in the short term. I retagged all of the assets to ensure compliance with the new categories and cleaned up existing metadata issues. Finally, I researched and developed a proposal for long term suggested revisions to their current taxonomy to account for future product expansion that includes utilizing unique identifiers and expanding the metadata field options for products. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Justin Segler | User and Market Research of Application Solutions for the Prevention of Opioid Overdose Fatalities | Dell Medical School | In my capstone project, I researched potential complementary software solutions to existing wearable hardware being developed by PhD students in the UT Cockrell School of Engineering to be used to provide aid to victims of opioid overdoses. Through market research, a literature review, and subject matter expert interviews, I investigated the current opioid addiction crisis and collected information about how opioids are administered, how opioid overdoses are identified, how opioid overdoses are treated, and what solutions are being explored to provide timely aid to victims of an opioid overdose. From this initial research, I explored possible application solutions which involve the general public as a means of providing the opioid overdose antidote Naloxone to victims of opioid overdoses. Through one-on-one interviews and a survey, I gauged the general interest of the public in providing aid to victims in need as a part of potential application solutions. Ultimately, my research provides greater light into what software and hardware solutions are most viable and effective in addressing the needs of opioid addicts who overdose. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Pedro Seguel | Visualizing Conflict of Interest in Medical Publishing | SAGA Lab | This project supports the development of data visualization tools that are part of Conflict Metrics, a broader initiative which aims to help researchers, policy-makers, providers, and patients rethink conflicts of interest over industry funding of clinical research. Conflict Metrics is the public-facing portal for data associated with S. Scott Graham's research on conflicts of interest in health and medicine. This site is devoted to providing public access to biomedical research sponsorship and funding data. During the capstone project at the Simulation and Game Applications (SAGA) Lab, we worked on a new version of the available visualization tools that enhance the current digital experience of the visualization tool. Our task was to build an interactive visualization dashboard, which affords users to explore and analyze a network association of data regarding industry and their funding of research. Users can search for areas of interest (disease-related) to filter data used in the visualization, choose the level of granularity (journal or author level), and choose among different network layouts. Also, requested features included interactive network-graph functionality using the R VizNetwork package. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sarah Serwe | Secondary School Library Services | Leander Independent School District | I completed a 160-hour Practicum in School Libraries at Vandegrift High School and Four Points Middle School. Through this experience, I gained practical knowledge and skills in the five roles of a school librarian: instructional partner, information specialist, literacy programmer, collection developer, and program administrator. As an instructional partner and information specialist, I collaborated with middle school teachers to teach 7th and 8th graders how to refine search results and identify credible sources. As a literacy programmer, I assisted with a middle school book tasting and a Valentine's-themed Blind Date with a Book display. In the role of collection developer, I collaborated with a U.S. History professor from Austin Community College to identify ways the library could support a book report project for dual-enrolled high school students. After performing a collection analysis of our narrative nonfiction collection, I developed a list of suggested titles to purchase to better meet the needs of these students. I assisted with weeding the collections at both schools as well. As a program administrator, I worked at the circulation desk, performed original and copy cataloging, processed interlibrary loans, took inventory, processed new books, reshelved materials, and updated spine labels. As a result of these experiences, I am prepared to deliver high quality, developmentally appropriate library services in a secondary school setting, and I am excited to apply these skills in my future career. | Spring 2019 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Bhavya Sharma | Data Visualization for FitBit for Baby | Department of Psychology:The University of Texas at Austin | The project FitBit for Baby is being conducted by the Daily Activity Lab. This project aims to provide help to mothers suffering from postpartum disorder. The main focus here is to figure out what affects the mom's mood. For this, there are sensors which are used to collect the observational data (like crying, talking, fussing, sleeping) of the child and the mom along with the survey data from the mom. Thus, we aim to create meaningful and interactive visualization of the collected data, which could be presented to the mom that would be helpful for them in understanding the behavior and patterns and ultimately help them cope up with the postpartum disorder. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Junshu Shi | UX Design: A Research Portal for Scholars to Better Interact with Research Data | Whole Communities?Whole Health | The main goal of the project is to design an online research portal for the professors in the community to retrieve, manage, analyze and share research data. I started with user research and competitive analysis to understand users' needs and pain points. Then, I created UX artifacts such as WAAD, user journey map to analyze the research data and built wireframes and prototypes accordingly. The final research portal will improve scholars and their subjects' overall experience of interacting with research data. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Shreshtha Shukla | Automating the Auditing Process for the Travis County District Clerk's Office | Travis County District Clerks Office | I am working with the Travis County District Clerk's Office for my capstone project. They maintain the official records of all court proceedings heard in the District Courts. This includes civil, civil, and family relations cases. All these records are audited to check whether the information is in the correct order and that all the necessary forms are present in the system. I worked on automating the process of auditing the documents to reduce the manual intervention in the process. The tool is developed using Python and SQL is used to query the database to find the cases that have any anomalies and to find a solution that makes it easier for the clerks to identify such mistakes. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Milind Siddhanti | Robust ETL Process with Airflow, Docker and Composer | WP Engine, Inc. | ETL (Extract, Transform and Load) is a method to process data to have a clean error free dataset. As part of creating a clean dataset, I have developed Python and R scripts to extract and transform the data and with the help of docker, composer and airflow scheduled jobs the data is loaded onto BigQuery. The data is then used to report or explore in Looker by creating LookML scripts and dashboards. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jaskirat Singh | Bringing Machine Learning Solutions to CarServ | CarServ Inc. | The objective of this project is to further enhance CarServ's existing platform by including machine learning solutions. With the focus of providing hassle-free car repair and service facilities to its users, CarServ is aimed at becoming a data-driven platform, powered by machine learning. In order to provide these services, CarServ is determined at understanding its users better than its competitors. The goal of this internship is to help CarServ getting closer to achieving this aim of understanding its customers better and providing them with the best possible solutions | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sanchit Singhal | Generating Application Program Interfaces (APIs) for Data Analytics | EOG Resources | Currently, the Information Systems department at EOG Resources is implementing a new data architecture, by leveraging new technologies such as Kubernetes, to expose IOT data via MemSQL to applications and the Data Science Team. This project explored new strategies of delivering information from this data repository to enable faster compute times and more reliable data. Several APIs were generated to allow users to pass in input parameters, predict using trained models, and output visualizations. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Audrey Sirgo | Synchronous Online Children?s Literature Course | University of Texas School of Information | This project focused on assisting Adjunct Professor Marion Rocco in creating a synchronous, online version of her live Children's Literature course (INF 322T). This Children's Literature course focuses on training students to select books appropriate for all ages and stages of childhood development and emphasizes critical analysis of the elements of literature in order to make these selections. With the goal of offering this course in the fall of 2019, we aimed to alter the format but not the overall content of the course. We conducted a syllabus review of different courses that are offered in this area around the country and also researched elements of successful online courses. In adjusting the format, we added Instapoll questions throughout the lectures, replaced some of the assignments to incorporate more student choice in the course curriculum and tested conference technologies from which to conduct synchronous online lectures that incorporate student participation. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Lipi Soni | Conduct Data Analysis and Competitive Intelligence for Fundraising | University Development Office, UT Austin | The University Development Office is charged with fundraising for the University of Texas at Austin. My contribution to the program will be in the form of competitive intelligence analysis to decipher what factors contribute to the success of peer colleges, schools, and units (CSU's) and what can be applied to their less successful counterparts (the College of Engineering to the College of Business, for example). This will involve the below three major tasks:- Review existing data such as visits, emails, contact reports, proposals submitted and closed by gift officers to identify viable attributes for analysis- Develop a supervised machine learning algorithm to identify key colleges, schools, or units (CSU's) attributes, and gift officer behaviors that contribute to donor fundraising- Finding and comparing features/traits for high performer gift officers to features/traits for low performer gift officer | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Yvonne Steckel | School Library Practicum: Early Literacy and Library Skills | Lamar Middle School | Linking early literacy to finding books in the library gives students the opportunity to apply the alphabet in a real world situation. The goal is for kindergarten students to discover that books are organized on the shelves alphabetically by the last name of the author and where to go to find books. Initially, the librarian reviews the alphabet with students and informs students that authors are organized by the first letter of their last name. Students work together with the librarian and teacher to identify which classmates have the selected letters at the beginning of their last name. Once students are identified, the librarian introduces the selected authors, highlighting their last names, and reads one story. Over several weeks, the students gain a strong understanding of how the books are arranged by the last name of the author and develop the confidence and higher level thinking to predict where authors will be located on the shelves. | Spring 2019 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Megan Steele | Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory's Works Progress Administration Record Collection | Texas Archaeological Research Labratory | The Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory houses records created by the Works Progress Administration (ca. 1930s). TARL was interested in digitizing and organizing the WPA records so that accessibility is increased for patrons. Working with only the Lake Buchanan and Marshall Ford Reservoir sections of the entire WPA collection, I worked to develop a workflow for digitization, as well as, a guide for processing that will be utilized by future workers to process the rest of the WPA collection and other collections held at TARL. Another focus was to make the ingestion of records into the created database easier going forward. To accomplish this we reworked the naming conventions and aspects of processing to make this easier for volunteers and other such personnel. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Christian Stephensen | I Spy: Uncovering Hidden Metadata for Greater Exposure | Texas State Library and Archives Commission | Working with the Texas State Library and Archives Commission (TSLAC), this capstone focuses on improving accessibility and use of the Governor Rick Perry Press Office born-digital photographs by enhancing collection search capabilities on the Texas Digital Archive. To realize this goal, metadata embedded within the photographs are identified, analyzed, and extracted, then reconciled and normalized to industry standards. The standardized photograph metadata are then uploaded onto the Texas Digital Archive, increasing the platform's text and faceted search capabilities. Along with the improved search efficiency and collection accessibility, this project been designed, managed, and documented to produce repeatable processes for use with future TSLAC and Texas Digital Archive media projects and collections. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Alexandria Suarez | Visualizing the 19th Century Mexican Political Sphere | My project entails working with the Genaro Garcia Photograph Collection to create a digital collection and a social network visualization of photographed 19th Century Mexican politicians. I incorporated a theoretical framework through weekly readings and tours in order to digitize photographs and to create the social network visualization using best practices and current standards. The phases of this project included digitization, describing photographs through metadata, developing the underlying datasets needed to create a social network visualization using Gephi, researching manuscript and printed holdings created by or about photographed individuals to link collection materials, and "bagging" procedures. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Elizabeth Tate | Cleaning-up the Google Analytics for UT Health San Antonio | University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio | UT Health San Antonio has a sprawling and robust Google Analytics system for their multiple websites supporting their hospital system and medical schools, but it needs an update to fix a few bugs. Thus, I am conducting a Site Inventory, documenting the current state of their Google Analytics permissions and views, conducting employee interviews to understand current pain points, and recommending changes for the future so the Marketing and UX Teams can function independently and know exactly what they are looking at for every dashboard. The goal is to have a lean and mean Google Analytics Machine that follows the best practices in Google Analytics. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Shih-Tsai Wei | A Usable Organizational UX Knowledgebase | UT Health San Antonio | Organizational UX Knowledgebase contains all the generated research conducted by UT Health San Antonio. It supports all their web products to serve different primary target audiences. This project went through different research methods to create the best information architecture for this database to assist Internal Web Initiatives team (primary users) to leverage previous research in future projects. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Abbie Weller | Leaving a Trail: Navigating Collection Assessment at the State Law Library | The State Law Library serves the legal research needs of the Texas Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeals as well as the citizens of the state. This capstone aims to define the process of and perform collection assessment on the print resources held at the library, both on the shelves and available in the archives. To achieve this, I researched collection assessment methods and techniques and defined representative segments from different subjects within the collection. After collecting data on these segments using custom Koha reports, I cleaned up and performed simple analysis on the data before compiling my relevant findings and recommendations into a usable report. Finally, I created a road map for future collection assessment based on my research and methods used during this project. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Joseph Wilkinson | Postpartum Depression - Research on Methods for Diagnosis, Education, and Treatment | Texas State Law Library | Postpartum depression can affect, directly or indirectly, both mothers and fathers after the birth of a child. The primary goal of the project was to conduct exploratory research to determine new methods for diagnosis and treatment of the condition. Specifically, we looked for ways to use technology to educate people about postpartum depression, as well as treat it. We hoped this would also increase accessibility of care to all communities. We conducted interviews directly with people who had experienced postpartum depression as well as people who knew someone who experienced it. Through the interviews we learned about their experiences and asked when and where intervention could have helped alleviate the condition. We also polled them about using technology to treat postpartum depression, and whether they found that to be potentially helpful. After completing the interviews, we collected our data and prepared a report containing our findings and recommendations. | Spring 2019 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Jiawei Wu | Benchmark Study for Keyboards on Thin and Light Gaming Notebooks | Dell Inc. | This project is to evaluate the performance and user preference for keyboards on thin and light gaming notebooks and understand how users use/would use a thin and light gaming system. Through competitive analysis and usability testing focusing on keyboard experiences of Alienware gaming notebooks and popular competitors, findings will be used to facilitate the design process of the next-generation Alienware. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Yuchong Xiao | A Data Pipeline for Financial Reporting | School of Understanding Studies, The University of Texas at Austin | The objective of this project is to build a financial reporting data reporting application to reduce the reporting time and create exciting dashboards. I collected data from multiple resources and analyzed the requirements of the financial data application through database searches and interviews. After that, I created relational databases in MySQL to handle the budget, transaction and account data, and design and build data pipeline. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Wendi Xu | Designing an Aggregated Search Interface for Security Management System Web Console | Trend Micro | This capstone project solves the problem of difficulty in identifying the block reason when a customer fails to access a certain IP address. That is because the IPS (Intrusion Prevention System) has multiple ways to block a flow, such as filters, traffic management filter, quarantine, inspection bypass, reputation, etc. In order to know how and why a certain flow is blocked, the user has to go through and check all those features one by one, which would cost a lot of time as these features are in different routes and places in the SMS (Security Management System) client. This problem is also one of the most common pain points identified by the customers in the company's 2018 CAB usability workshop. The whole project is three months long and it includes scenario mapping, competitive analysis, prototyping, and multiple iterations. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Xinyi Xu | Conversational Interface for Supply Chain Risk Management Data Visualization | How might we make an easy-to-use interface for lay users to explore data in the supply chain? This project aims to solve this problem using a conversational user interface and interactive data visualizations. Several key design decisions are made to achieve the goal. For example, how to match the user interface with data novice's mental models of constructing data visualizations? How to integrate structured and natural language modalities so that users can get a sense of control? How to use conversational queries to disambiguate and simplify the input? Two conversations are designed for the project demo, along with interactive data visualizations coded with Bokeh in Python and D3.js in JavaScript. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Zihan Yang | Design & Develop for GivePulse Application | Expero | GivePulse provides a platform to list, find, organize and measure the impact of service and volunteerism in the community. In order to better serve volunteers and administrators, I started from testing all the functions embedded in the app and identifying important issues needed to be fixed. After that I built the high-fidelity prototype to solve the 'Impact' issue by using Sketch and InVision. In the end I developed the prototype on the mobile app by using React Native. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kexin Yu | Recruitment and Talent Management Website and Application: Redesign the Experience of Online Job Application and the Talent Management | TalentCare | TalentCare is a data-driven recruiting firm with nationwide positions from clinical and non-clinical healthcare roles, and front line staff to executives in business and retail services. For the project, I worked as the UX designer on the team, conducted user testing, heuristic evaluation, competitive analysis and user interview on web-based job application process and the recruitment and talent management web application to find usability and accessibility issues. And then redesigned the application process and web app iteratively from wireframes to high-fi prototypes based insights I got from user research as well as the requirements and feedback from the stakeholders. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Ziyi Yue | Desktop Application for the Alternative Investment Market | This capstone project will be focused on creating a demonstration (e.g., Invision) for financial experts who trade and manage alternative assets (e.g., trading collateralized debt/loans, commercial real estate, raw materials - lumber, etc.). Alternative investments are a growing market. Unlike equities and other more mainstream investments (e.g., stocks, bonds, funds), alternative investments lack modern software tooling and data access. Goal of this capstone will be to create a new, modern user experience delivered via desktop for the alternative investment market. Feature scope tentatively to include:?portfolio management?hypothetical trade scenarios?compliance?trading/order book management?investment strategy | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Xiaoyu Zeng | Predicting the Cognitive Skills for Automated Visual Question Answering | Expero | How do you navigate your morning commute, plan your outfit for the day, or read through this sentence? Human experiences are largely multimodal and contextual. Infants learn from seeing, touching, hearing and sometimes tasting the world around them. Signals flow through multiple sensory channels and often have distinct representations and statistics. In this project, we propose a method to automatically identify the cognitive skills required for the multimodal problem of visual question answering (VQA). We collected skill labels, extracted features from images and texts, and trained a recurrent neural network to perform binary multi-label classification for three main cognitive skills: text recognition, color recognition, and object counting. Our results demonstrate the potential of skill prediction for improving current VQA applications. We also provide an analysis that sheds light on blind users' unique information needs and biases in traditional benchmarks. Our method contributes to a more nuanced understanding of visual question answering. It can facilitate labeling and routing tasks for mobile assistive technologies. | Spring 2019 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Jana Zevnik | Processing and Digitizing the George W. Smyth Papers at TSLAC | The George W. Smyth Papers, a manuscript collection located at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, document the life and work of Smyth (1803-1866), a congressman and signer of both the Texas Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The collection includes a variety of documents including boundary treaties, correspondence, meeting minutes, maps, account records, and memoranda. My project fully processes and digitizes the Smyth Papers, which includes metadata work as well as setting up collection files in the Texas Digital Archive enabling online access to collection materials. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Meng Zhang | Image Captioning Algorithms for Images Taken by People with Visual Impairments | Texas State Library and Archives Commission | People with visual impairments regularly encounter the challenge that their visual impairments expose them to a time-consuming, or even impossible, task of learning what content is presented in an image without assistance. One method to address this problem is image captioning with machine learning. With the help of image captioning algorithms together with artificial intelligence speech system, people who are blind can instantly learn what is in an image, since such systems can automatically generate text captions. In this work, we analyze the new VizWiz dataset and compare it to the MSCOCO dataset, which is widely used for evaluating the performance of image captioning algorithms. We also implement and evaluate two state-of-the-art image caption models with accuracy, runtime and resource analysis. Hopefully, our research will help the improvement of image captioning algorithms which focus on fulfilling the everyday need for people with visual impairments. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Meng Zhou | Video Interviewing in Recruiting | Indeed | Video interviewing helps employers connect with and close the best candidates, and hire quickly and smartly. What value could Indeed provide employers with a video interviewing tool compared to other third-party video conferencing tools like Skype and FaceTime? By educating employers progressively about the best practices of video interviewing, integrating the interview package with all the information they need into the video interviewing seamlessly, and facilitating internal information sharing and external candidate communicating, we reinforce the high moments of human touch for employers, help them to be more confident about their decision of candidates, and create a positive candidate interviewing experience and employer branding. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Rachael Zipperer | Discovering, Documenting, and Highlighting Collections of Texas Digital Library Member Institutions | Texas Digital Library | As a consortium of Texas higher education institutions, the Texas Digital Library (TDL) consists of 22 member institutions from every region of Texas including public and private universities and academic medical centers. While TDL hosts many members? digital repositories, there has not previously been a comprehensive survey of member institutions? digital collections. I have surveyed the public-facing repositories of TDL member institutions and interviewed repository managers to create a report that documents digital collections and identifies collecting strengths across these institutions. The information in the report served as a resource to determine the content of a social media campaign and digital exhibit I curated to promote TDL member digital collections. Engagement through these online platforms will work to bring public awareness to Texas digital collections especially those of smaller institutions or that document underrepresented communities, and the report is intended to inform future TDL projects as well. | Spring 2019 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Negeen Aghassibake | Portfolio | Instruction and Outreach at Dell Children's Medical Center | This project implemented outreach and communication initiatives at the Dell Children's Medical Center Medical Library and Family Resource Center in order to evaluate and increase the number of information and search requests from patients and families. In addition, instructional materials were created for Dell Children's staff and volunteers that discuss health/e-health literacy and outline the resources and services available at the Dell Medical Library and Family Resource Center for patients, families, hospital staff, and volunteers. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Selena Aleman | Portfolio | Archives Education Outreach: Students Using LBJ Library Collections for Research | Education outreach for archivists frequently consists of selecting items from manuscript collections for teachers v use as primary sources, however, this project aims to have teachers bring students to the archive to recreate a full research experience. For this project, I worked with the LBJ education outreach and archives departments to identify specific boxes highlighting cultural moments within LBJ's presidency. I then created a research plan for each of these boxes as well as how-to research guides for students. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Carlos Alvarado | Portfolio | A Collections Assessment at the Fort Sam Houston Museum Archives. | An archival collections assessment was performed at the Fort Sam Houston Museum which is a small to medium-sized institution located in San Antonio, Texas. The museum is staffed by two full-time employees who manage the day to day operations. The purpose of the assessment was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the museum's archival collections while focusing on short- and long-term preservation needs. This was done to establish preservation priorities that best utilize resources and staff efforts. Recommendations from the assessment resulted in an improved system of arrangement of the museum archives that utilized space more efficiently as well as the creation of a preservation needs hierarchy for materials in need of collections care. The assessment provided an opportunity to build a strong working relationship with a small group of museum professionals who must balance the delicate needs and demands of the institution and its stakeholders with the attention needed to properly care for unique and one of a kind items. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kelsey L. Belcher | Portfolio | Pong to Pokemon: Evaluating the Visitor Experience of a Museum Exhibit | The Bullock Texas State History Museum | Pong to Pokemon: The Evolution of Electronic Gaming was the Bullock Texas State History Museum's first foray into immersive experiences in several years. For my Master's capstone project in the fall of 2017, I was tasked by the Director of Education and the Digital Media Team with evaluating several aspects of the exhibit and whether they were achieving their engagement and learning objectives. My observations and interviews yielded key insights about the space and the ways visitors interact within it will be instrumental to future exhibit design at the Bullock. My findings concerning particular aspects of the exhibit, such as the arcade soundscape, will encourage the curatorial and exhibit design staff that not only can they experiment with immersive experiences in the future, but that these can be successful and effective aspects of the exhibit. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Kristen Caccavale | Portfolio | Marketing by Industry: How a Microsoft Partner Adjusts to Changing Marketing Strategies | Microsoft has recently moved its marketing strategies toward customizing according to industry. As a Microsoft partner, Catapult Systems has also had to shift its strategies to meet customer needs. Through a combination of marketing battlecards, internal solution sheets, and website content, this project revamped Catapult's strategies, making them more industry-specific. Industries covered include healthcare, public sector, retail, manufacturing, and financial services. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Olivia Cannon | Portfolio | Delving into Membership Data: Recommendations for the Texas Library Association | The Texas Library Association is a 501(c)(3) professional organization with over 6,000 members. Over this semester I thoroughly examined their current membership data and data collection practices. The final product is a three part report which examines current pitfalls in TLA's data collection practices, makes recommendations for improvements, and offers ideas for how TLA might become a thought leader in their field by using data analysis to perform targeted outreach to their membership base. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Pamela Carlile | Portfolio | Full STEAM Ahead: STEAM Programming and Resources for Children | Children are natural born scientists and engineers. They are full of curiosity and love to experiment. Engaging children with math and science early in life helps them to develop an interest in these subjects. For my capstone project, I created and provided STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) programming for children at the Buda Public Library. I planned and presented five STEAM themed storytimes for preschoolers, and one STEAM family program. In addition to creating and presenting programs, I selected STEAM themed fiction and non-fiction children's books to add to the library's collection. I also researched and selected books, resources, and activities, so that the Buda Library could begin circulating interactive STEAM kits for children. I researched the benefits of STEAM learning for children, and wrote an elevator speech for Buda Library staff members to explain to patrons why the library offers STEAM programs for preschoolers. Finally, I wrote a proposal of how to conduct an outcome-based evaluation of the STEAM programs offered at the Buda Public Library. Overall, completing this capstone project allowed me to gain familiarity with the daily activities and overall character of a children's area in a public library, as well as gave me the confidence and knowledge to provide services to children and their families. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Yoomi Cha | Portfolio | A Usability Test for a Dual Screen Device | The goal of this capstone project is investigating a dual screen device through the perspectives of both physical and user interface. Dual-screen devices from Dell have not been released on the market, and this provides great potential for usability research. Currently, there is very little user experience research that has been done on dual-screen devices. For this reason, this study anticipates user contexts and tasks to develop usability insights. Therefore, the experiment includes four common tasks derived from smartphone interaction and usage from previous single screen device research. These include writing a text message, reading a text, taking a photo, and watching a video. The method analyzes user posture and level of thermal conduction depending on materials used in dual-screen devices. The results include four distinct heatmaps showing areas of touch. Based on this research, final recommendations are given on dual screen thermal durability. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Xi Chen | Portfolio | Redesigning the GivePulse Volunteer Registration Process | This project is to improve the volunteer end-user registration experience for a volunteer matching platform. Nearly 70 percent of the support required comes from registration. GivePulse wants to know what steps end users need to complete the registration process effectively and clearly. The administrator can collect needed information for the event and decide to approve the request or not. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Courtney Christner | Portfolio | Administrative History Collection Finding Aid Optimization | The Administration Histories Collection, began as a project under Lyndon Baines Johnson's final term in office, was created to document each government department's projects under his administration and was one of the first collections sent to the Presidential Library. The finding aid for the collection consisted of photocopied table of contents pages with annotated box numbers off to the side. My project was to create a finding aid template for the entire collection using two series: the Department of the Interior and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, that would optimize patrons' discovery of information within the collection. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Samantha Cook | Portfolio | Access and Reference in Libraries and Archives | School of Information | Currently, UT participates in the WISE Consortium by having their students take classes through other universities, but have wanted to contribute by teaching a course. My project is designed as a web-based course on the topic of Access and Reference, co-taught in the summer of 2018. As a current Reference Archivist, I have seen firsthand the importance education can have on an archivist's ability to help provide access and reference services. This course focuses on access and reference in both libraries and archives. I choose to include both fields to provide the students a better knowledge of the difference and similarities in libraries and archives. My goal is to design a course that is both informative and engaging that focusing on creating a successful online learning environment. I am focusing on the use of different technologies like videos and podcasts on top of tradition learning styles of readings and discussions. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Elle Covington | Portfolio | Data Mapping for the University of Texas Libraries E-News | The data mapping project was designed to help answer questions about how UT Libraries' email subscribers engage with email content, how donors engage with email content, and specifically how UT Libraries can encourage increased engagement, including increased donations from email campaigns. My goal was to determine patterns in current rates of engagement and develop recommendations based on those trends. I collected email engagement data for over 23,000 email subscribers and compared them against UT's donor database to gain insights on audience demographics and engagement both with UT Libraries and with the larger UT community. From this data, I developed a set of guidelines and recommendations, part of which were put into effect for UT Libraries' 40 for Forty fundraising campaign in April, and which will continue to inform and guide the development of email content and sending strategies in the future. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sara Craig | Portfolio | Collection and Preservation Needs Assessment for Hogg Family Artifacts | Collection and Preservation Needs Assessment for Hogg Family Artifacts | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Carrie Cruce | Portfolio | Online Course Content Design: A Learner-Centered Focus | This project focuses on the collaborative redesign and creation of course content for the School of Information's online undergraduate course INF303D: Academic Success in the Digital University. The first phase of this project involved the research and assessment of instructional design strategies for online learning and information meta-literacy. Team Based Learning, Universal Design for Learning, backward design, and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy were identified as actionable models. The second phase is focused on the creation of course content including learning outcomes, active learning exercises, and assessment for the information cycle, research and evaluation, copyright, and academic integrity modules of this course. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jessica Cvijic | Portfolio | Exploring the Texas Library Association Data and its Presentation. | The purpose of this project is to gather and study existing data and survey methods surrounding the use of public and school libraries for the past ten years and throughout the United States. It is then necessary to explore ways in which the past data and methods may be improved upon by the Texas Library Association in order to better represent the value of Texas libraries to students and patrons. Finally, methods of framing the data qualitatively and more effectively in order to gain support politically and from local communities will be defined and critically examined. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Brandon Dang | Portfolio | Handwriting Transcription Using Word Spotting and Humans in the Loop | Handwritten materials such as historical document collections are increasingly being digitized and made available for purposes of preservation, scholarly analysis, and text retrieval. To this end, numerous specialized software tools have been developed to support the crowdsourced transcription of such texts. However, as many of these tools operate at the page-level, they may not be suitable for documents containing privacy-sensitive data such as medical records, as this risks the potential of disclosing such information to unintended parties. Additionally, manual transcription efforts can be slow and expensive.Automatic optical character recognition (OCR) methods perform poorly on handwritten text due to the large variability in human handwriting, degradation of historical texts, artifacts of scanning, and other sources of noise. As such, handwritten text analysis remains an active area of research. With the renewed interest in neural networks, recent methods using deep learning have achieved unprecedented state-of-the-art results on benchmark datasets in areas including word recognition, word spotting, and character recognition. Despite this, current methods are not yet robust enough to fully automate handwriting transcription tasks alone.In this work, we aim to combine the efficiency of machine learning with the accuracy of human intelligence to semi-automatically transcribe a challenging real-world dataset of word images segmented from historical handwritten medical records as part of the Central State Hospital Digital Library project. Specifically, we leverage a deep convolutional network to generate a feature set, identify groups of similar images using unsupervised density-based clustering, and obtain cluster transcriptions from human workers on an online crowdsourcing platform. In doing so, we aim to reduce the number of images to be sent to the crowd, thereby optimizing monetary and time costs while still maintaining an acceptable level of accuracy and preserving the privacy of the data. | Spring 2018 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Lea DeForest | Portfolio | Open Education Resources Are Here to Stay: Are Texas Schools Ready? | As defined by the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), Open Education encompasses resources, tools and practices that are free of legal, financial and technical barriers and can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment. Open Education Resources (OER) are free to use and access, but the logistics of acquiring, managing, implementing access to, and defining OER is challenging for academic libraries. The objective of my capstone project is to facilitate better understanding of the issues and challenges surrounding OER, measure OER readiness among Texas colleges and universities, and develop resources that will assist Texas academic libraries of the Texas Digital Library consortium start and sustain implementation of OER on their campuses. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Anna DeKoning | Portfolio | Searchable Ornithological Research Archive (SORA) Digital Exhibit | SORA is a library-run, open access archive of ornithological literature from approximately 50 different publications dating back to the late 19th century. The publications include numerous hand-drawn illustrations and photographs of the birds studied and portraits of the birds in nature. For the University of New Mexico, I created an online exhibit of these ornithological illustrations using Omeka. The exhibit provides interpretive information on the history and evolution of scientific illustration in Ornithology and provide a showcase and index of major illustrations published in SORA partner journals. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Virginia Dempsey | Portfolio | ArchivesSpace as an Archival Collection Management Tool at the Harry Ransom Center | Utilizing interviews with key stakeholders at the Harry Ransom Center and research of peer institutions that have successfully implemented ArchivesSpace, this research project supplies recommendations to support the best use of ArchivesSpace as an archival management tool for the unique requirements posed by the Harry Ransom Center's collections. By assessing staff workflows within the current system of databases, mapping internal database relationships, and importing collections representative of the Harry Ransom Center's cataloging needs, this project suggests the potential uses of ArchivesSpace for each cataloging department within the Harry Ransom Center, customizations to ArchivesSpace to better fit the institution, and recommended adjustments to staff workflows to allow for future implementation. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Linli Ding | Portfolio | Assessing the Predictive Model for Student Matriculation | The project provides data driven analysis of the matriculation decision in support of institutional planning, decision making, and reporting. The objective of this project is to evaluate the accuracy of a set of statistical models that predict which admitted applicant will matriculate, and provide insights on the effects of monetary grants on students' enrollment. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Chu-Ting Fan | Portfolio | User Experience Design for HERdacity | HERdacity is a nonprofit women's leadership organization which connects, promotes, and empowers women to seize opportunities for fulfillment and impact. As a UX design intern at HERdaicty, I focus on the website user experience and lead the design process of the HERdacity website redesign, including user research, interaction design, visual design, and prototyping. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Maria Fernandez | Portfolio | The Coloniality of Metadata: A Critical Data Analysis of the Archive of Early American Images at the John Carter Brown Library | How do contemporary metadata practices replicate the coloniality of power embedded in European colonial documents describing the Spanish Americas? This report draws from critical theory within the field of Latin American studies to explore the extent to which standardized description and categorization practices can perpetuate a Eurocentric colonial gaze on the Spanish Americas. In order to ground this theoretical engagement within the fields of information science and critical data studies, a dataset is compiled and computationally analyzed, which contains metadata records corresponding to images derived from books, manuscripts, and broadsides printed between 1492 and 1825 about the Spanish Americas found in the Archive of Early American Images at the John Carter Brown Library. This report then applies unsupervised machine learning techniques such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling, and k-means clustering, and counts word frequencies to identify broad metadata trends across the collection. Ultimately, this report combines methods from critical data studies and Latin American cultural studies to begin to understand how controlled vocabularies and descriptive practices can perpetuate colonial structures of power. | Spring 2018 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Elizabeth Fletcher | Portfolio | Project Management for Digital Asset Librarians: Dell Brand Iconography Refresh | The undertaking and management of the Dell brand iconography refresh is an eight-month project encompassing the retiring and publishing of over 5,000 icon assets to the Dell digital asset management system. The challenges faced throughout the course of this project included defining the scope, managing communication, setting, adjusting, and maintaining deadlines, and inputting metadata for all newly published assets. Utilized methods have included tracking hours and tasks completed, logging all communication around the project, analyzing the way the project is progressing and what could have been done differently to avoid the current problems. The goals for this project are to complete the retirement of old, and the publishing of new, icon assets to the DAM and to create a repository of all Dell brand approved icons that is complete, up to date, and easy to navigate and use for all creative teams at Dell. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Bria Fowler | Portfolio | Evaluating the Customer Purchase Experience through Journey Mappi | Storytelling techniques assist the UX design process by defining and communicating the needs of a user to an audience. Customer journey maps integrate the use of storytelling by creating a visualization of a customer's experience including their goals, emotions, and pain points they may face. For my project, I analyzed survey feedback from over 100 respondents about their satisfaction levels when purchasing an electronic device. Through survey analysis, affinity diagramming, and persona creation I developed a customer journey map of this purchase experience while highlighting future opportunities for the client. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Weixuan FU | Portfolio | Mobile App Design and Development Rewrite | I leveraged React Native to rewrite an existing mobile app of GivePulse. The GivePulse Sign-in app is to help events administrators check in and out volunteers. Volunteers can also use it to do self checking in. Also, I applied my UI and UX practices learned from previous courses to improve the app design and solve specific practical problems with GivePulse. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kathryn Golden | Portfolio | AI Assistants and Human Values | This report investigated the relationship between human values and usage of artificial intelligence personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa. Data was gathered by distributing a survey that utilized a personal value questionnaire (introduced by Schwartz (2007) and made gender neutral by Verma, Koltai, and Fleischmann (2017)) as well as by interviewing users of AI personal assistants. The goal of this research is to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence the use of these technologies so that they can be made to better suit their intended populations. | Spring 2018 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Eric Graham | Portfolio | Mixed Reality Device User Testing at Dell | As the technology for mixed reality devices evolves, significant research and testing for corresponding interfaces must be done. Without an understanding of user needs, the application of such technology will be severely limited. However, conducting user studies on such devices has many obstacles. At Dell, the experience design team is tasked with finding the most effective way to produce insightful data on user needs for these products. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Han Han | Portfolio | UX Design and Development for Givepulse.com | Facilitating clients product visions by researching, conceiving, wireframing, sketching, prototyping and mocking up user experiences for GivePulse.com. This includes UI development using JS, Jquery, Bootstrap, SCSS and PHP. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Grace Hansen | Portfolio | Buildings of Texas: Supporting Visual Browsing of Geospatial Archival Holdings through Web Mapping | Providing access to geospatial archival holdings through visual browsing offers exciting new opportunities for all users. As part of the University of Texas at Austin Libraries' effort to build an infrastructure to support its geospatial data, Hansen is geocoding a dataset representing an archival collection at the Alexander Architectural Archives and creating a web map to provide access to descriptive information. This capstone presentation will discuss both conceptual and technical considerations that went into this project, including the decision to conceptualize the map as a finding aid and the ways in which spatial browsing better supports discovery for geospatial collections. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Yue He | Portfolio | UX Design for Supply Chain System Cases | Expero is trying to redesign and develop the supply chain systems to help optimize its clients' business. By talking with the representatives from the client, we extract what they care about most and what problems there are searching for solutions. My job is building wireframes and high-fidelity prototype regarding existing user cases. I built several different versions of prototypes and keep refining and combined them into the final one. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sidvita Hegde | Portfolio | Member Portal Development for Impact Austin | Impact Austin is a non-profit that gives out grants to local non-profits. Currently they have a website and my project is to extend the website's capability by developing a Member Portal. This will make it easier for the members to access crucial information like announcements, upcoming activities, volunteer roles taken up, etc on their dashboards and also enable them to change personal information with ease. The project realises the end goal by leveraging the current technology in use which is Salesforce Apex and Visualforce. The end goal is to match the product to the designs provided to me by the supervisor. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Emily Higgs | Portfolio | The Connie Sinclair Collection | The Connie Sinclair collection is a small collection of African-Americana (ca. 1930s - 1950s) consisting of photographs, photo albums, news clippings, and manuscript letters from the estate of Connie Sinclair, an African-American woman Lieutenant active during WWII. Working with Michael Laird Rare Books LLC, Emily Higgs researched, processed, rehoused, and described the collection according to current archival methodology with some preservation work on photographs and albums in order to prepare the collection for its permanent home in an archive or library. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Alisa Holahan | Redesign of the Tarlton Law Library's Digital Collection of Historical Texas Constitutions | The Tarlton Law Library has hosted a rich though outdated website containing historical versions of the Texas Constitution and related documents. This project involved the redesign of this website and its migration to the LibGuides platform. The website has been modernized to better serve users, and the new platform will allow library staff to more easily manage the content. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Wanchen Huo | Portfolio | App Design: Community & Service Promotion for UT Student-athletes | In the UT-Austin Student-Athlete Service Office, the staff faces the huge difficulty in information delivery. Because most of the student-athletes have no time to use service office resources, which are important to student-athletes' wellness and personal development. So, we designed our app MindStrength that will provide student-athletes with wellness and personal development presentations on their device - instead of in person. We got to know our user needs through user research, then built the information architecture of our app. After approved by our client Dr. Gill, we did iterative design through lo-fi to hi-fi mock-up. Since the complication of the app, I did the project with Shishu Yang, Xiaomeng Mu together. I'm in charge of designing the part of community building and service promotion, which includes pages like leaderboard, events, rsvp, etc. Through these features, the app will help the office promote their service and strengthen the student-athlete community. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Scott Jordan | Portfolio | Oversized Collection at St. Edward's University Archives | Processing the Oversized Collection at St. Edward's University Archives includes a complete inventory, proper identification, stable housing, and the arrangement and description of the materials in ArchivesSpace with authority-controlled terms. An EAD finding aid is generated from the database for reference, and a few select items have been digitized for additional resource discovery and access. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Vivek Khetan | Portfolio | Survival Analysis of United States Photovoltaic Solar Installers | LBJ School of Public Affairs | The idea of this project is to study the state of household solar installers in the United States. The last couple of years say a decade has been great for them and we all have witnessed them become a normal everyday keyword from something very costly and research-oriented term.In this work, we studied more than 300000 installations made here in various location of United States and formulated it to understand the reasons for success as well as the failure of many installers in these years.In this work, we did use KM curve and Cox regression to fit a survival model. And we are also looking into network analysis feature to understand what kind of network installers formed with panel manufactures and battery manufactures over the course of ten years.The data was very dirty and I spent a lot of time cleaning it. We were able to so some basic survival analysis task but still far from our expectations. We are looking into network features, e.g., first order coupling, second-order coupling, HHI to improve upon our Cox regression model. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Keith Lacy | Portfolio | Moore Program Associate at Tarlton Law Library | Project work consisted of collection analyses on two of Tarlton Law Library's special collections: The Law and Pop Culture Collection (LPOP) and the Hyder Popular Reading Room. The Moore Program also consists of meetings and interviews with all of Tarlton's librarians, training on library systems, and working at the circulation and reference desks. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Pang-Sheng (Harrison) Lai | Portfolio | Hierarchy: Managing Tool for a Financial Institution (BGA) | Design a web application post-MVP feature, hierarchy tool, for the new COVR Financial Technologies web app. This web application mainly focus on helping life insurance agents on their daily work, especially managing the current policies they have written. This web application will enable them to maintain the customer relationship and the hierarchy tool will give the agents or the managers the ability to manage the organization, so they can adjust the individual relationship among the organization according to the day to day change in the financial institution, as they change continuously and frequently. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Todd Lim | Portfolio | La Michoacana Website Redesign | The aim of this project is to provide a website redesign for La Michoacana Meat Market (http://www.lamichoacanameatmarket.com/en/) because the website suffers from information overload. First, Deliverable A (Weeks 1-4) utilized design skills gained from iSchool classes in redesigning a Bi-weekly Specialst poster; creating an information dashboard for two segmented pork products; and tying those two sub-deliverables together into a 15-page written report. Second, Deliverable B (Weeks 5-9) allowed for two iterations of usability testing and two iterations of Balsamiq mockup designs for both desktop and mobile; this culminated in a slide deck that would be presented to the supervisor. Deliverable C (Weeks 10-14) aimed to implement those usability and mockup insights with front-end technology, in addition to curating a UX resource for the project portfolio's long-term value to the organization. Deliverable D (Week 15) involved creating and preparing for the poster presentation. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Amelia Llorens | Portfolio | Continuing Development of Library Instruction Materials for Dell Medical School | The objective of the project was to aid in the development of library instruction services for the Dell Medical School Library by creating online instructional materials as well as planning and teaching an instructional session. I began by reviewing research on best practices relating to the creation of online instructional materials, such as LibGuides, and research on effective instructional methodologies. I then designed LibGuides and an instructional session for the Dell Medical School Library based upon best practices gathered from the literature review. My hope is that the new LibGuides will be useful resources to Dell Medical School students and staff and that the best practices from the literature review will guide the creation of future instructional materials for the library. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Irene Lule | "An Environmental Scan of GIS in the Archive" | My capstone focuses on an environmental scan on the use of geospatial data and GIS in archives. The first portion involved researching other institutions and their use of geospatial data from archival collections in GIS projects. The second portion of the project focused primarily on the Alexander Architectural Archives, their metadata, identifying the types of materials/archival collections suitable for GIS projects, highlighting potential collaborators for future digital projects, and creating use cases relevant to the archive. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Nicole Marino | Preserving Digital Exhibition Records at the Alexander Architectural Archives | Exhibits and the work undertaken to plan and execute them are inherently ephemeral and, as such, difficult to archive. This project aimed to develop a retention schedule and preservation plan for the Alexander Architectural Archives' digital exhibition records by appraising the files produced from a 2014 exhibition, "Inside Modern Texas: the Case for Preserving Interiors." These files were then ingested into UT Libraries' recently launched digital asset management system. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Molly McGee | Portfolio | User-Focused Instructional Design | This project focused on re-developing an online undergraduate course, INF303D, Academic Success in the Digital University, which will be piloted during the Summer 2018 semester for an audience of incoming freshmen students. In order to develop a better online class, we analyzed and gathered data from a survey administered to over 150 students in iSchool undergraduate courses to inform our decision-making and identify student pain-points. We researched best practices for course development and instructional design, and applied techniques and tools including a graphic syllabus, screencasts and interactive presentations of lecture material, backwards design methodology, Team Based Learning, and threshold concepts. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Serena Mistry | Portfolio | Designing a Motion Graphics Video to Promote Sentier | To promote the Sentier brand, I designed and developed a motion graphics video about using biometric measurements in user research. I started by researching best practices and learning necessary tools and then, based on a provided script, I brainstormed ideas with sketches and a mood board, edited the script, created a storyboard and designed the visual elements. The final product of my project is a short video that will increase awareness of Sentier and inform viewers on the value of using biometric measurements in user research. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Xiaomeng Mu | Portfolio | Communication and Chat-bot System Design for UT Student Athlete | The Student-Athlete Behavioral Health Department of the University of Texas at Austin plans to build an educational application that provides student-athletes with wellness and personal development presentations on their device. After conducting user research with both student-athletes and department staffs, we embedded more features to the application to solve their pain-points. I designed an interactive mobile app prototype that provides user shortcuts to student-athlete department services and communicate better. There were lots of focus on how to add more funand convenience to the interactions between people and people, as well as people and the system. Except for weekly meeting with the client, there were also usability testings applied to shape the design better for users. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Alicia Niwagaba | Portfolio | From the Field to the Digital Archive: Best Practices for Curating Language Data | Language researchers have increasingly found a need to organize and curate their data in ways that can be easily ingested into digital archives. Through this project I created a series of video tutorials relating to best practices in data curation for language documentation to help clarify the interactions between archivists and field researchers. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Nicole Oglesby | Portfolio | Digital Humanities at UT: Library Guide Design and Workshop Instruction | For my capstone project, I supported digital scholarship initiatives at UT Austin by teaching three workshops on digital humanities software tools at UT Libraries and the Fusion Room, a digital humanities lab sponsored by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. In order to teach the workshops, I learned each software tool and created corresponding teaching materials. Another component of my project involved creating a comprehensive library guide on the digital humanities field, software tools, projects, and more. Creating the guide involved research and evaluation of digital humanities tools and resources and writing summaries of tools, methods, and theories. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jain Orr | Portfolio | Assessment of the Austin High School Library Drama Collection | Austin High School Library | Austin High School has a robust theatre program and ethnically diverse student body. The drama collection in the school library fails to meet the needs of the students and sees embarrassingly levels of circulation. This could be due to the location of the drama collection in the nonfiction section, or because the content of the collection'ss playwriters are overwhelming old, white, and male. To improve circulation of the drama collection, I (1) moved the collection out of nonfiction to a more prominent location in the library, (2) provided a list of plays to be purchased by the librarian when the funds become available. | Spring 2018 | School Library Practicum | |
| Soham Patel | Fraud Detection in Loans | As a part of my PEP experience, I am working as an Analytics Intern at CreditShop LLC. The project I am focusing on is titled "Fraud Detection in Loans." Our main goal is to identify risky loan applicants at the very 1st step, i.e., when they apply for loans. Secondarily we also want to predict when and why an active applicant will default on his loan payments. We are using predictive modeling and data mining algorithms. I am handling data preprocessing in Python and Predictive modelling in SAS. The required data is read from flat files on AWS server and the processed characteristics are stored in an SQL table. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Kate Pauquette | Portfolio | Course Creation: Access and Reference in Libraries and Archives | School of Information | Through the WISE Consortium the iSchool takes part in, we have been able to take online courses offered at other universities. However, we noticed a lack of UT courses being offered through the WISE consortium to non-UT students. Therefore our project was to design a web-based course on a topic that interests us: Access and Reference in Archives and Libraries and offer it through the WISE Consortium. We are working with a current member of the ischool faculty, Dr. Ciaran Trace, to create a course that is both engaging and challenging for the students to learn applicable skills and knowledge in their field. We are developing the course in Canvas and including as many interactive elements, such as videos, podcasts, and field visits, as possible to engage the students with the learning materials. Our goal is to teach this course in Summer 2018. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yan Qi | Portfolio | UX Research on PC Gaming Systems and Their Exclusive Gaming Optimization Software | A project for Dell demonstrating the UX research for systems and software applications used to customize gaming notebooks, desktop and peripherals and improve gaming experience. Specific works include competitive analysis, heuristics evaluation, and iterative usability studies. Findings will be used to facilitate the design process of the next-generation Alienware Command Center. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Harish Raghuraman | Portfolio | CARE App for Medical Students | Simulation and Gaming Application Labs at UT Austin in association with Dell Medical School and Texas A&M are working on a research project to understand medical students' mental health and help them alleviate stress. Medical students due to their rigorous schedule and activities experience stress on a daily basis. This stress leads to lack of empathy which affects them psychologically. To design a solution to address this problem, design thinking was the primary method used. As understanding the user base is crucial, time was invested in interviewing, focus group and user research. Based on the defined persona requirements were defined which led to ideation and wireframing of the interfaces. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jasmeen Kaur Rajpal | Understanding Platform Activity by Testing Hypotheses and Developing Dashboards | A local startup wants to analyze platform metrics to understand what data is being utilized on the platform and how, and what data should be added to the platform. I am identifying key metrics of popular datasets, and the themes and patterns that will guide decision-making around the addition of new datasets. My goal is to develop a dashboard and model that will include the detailed metrics that will bring insights and actionable recommendations to different teams in the organization. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Kapil Raole | Portfolio | Creation of a New Website for TXPRENEUR | We are in a process of building a small business community-oriented website called TXPRENEUR.com. Our aim is to feature behind-the-scenes stories of successful small businesses with the goal of bringing out the good spirit within communities, promoting entrepreneurship, and building trust; benefitting both, the businesses and the community. First phase of website will feature a weekly spotlight blog feature, with next phases consisting of behind-the-scenes video story with the owners, podcasts and story writing contests for high school kids. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Semeon Risom | Portfolio | Film Texas! The Back and Front-end of Extending the Texas Film Industry | This project hopes to develop the infrastructure of the Texas Film Commission (TFC) database. This project will attempt to do this in two ways. The first is by building a uniform database that consolidates existing fragmented data from multiple sources. The second goal is to create a Software as a Service (SaaS) for the TFC. This will involve creating dashboard-based modules that include: document generation, data manipulation, analytics, search engine, machine learning. The audiences reached by this work will not only include TFC staff by also members of government, film industry, and private sector. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sara Rogers | Creating an Inventory for SXSW's Audiovisual Materials | Every year the South by Southwest conferences, festivals, and exhibitions produce unique and innovative programming. With almost every one of these events filmed, SXSW's video archive has grown exponentially over the years. In order to help content managers make decisions regarding future uses of archival footage, I created an inventory of their audiovisual assets. This inventory documents all available metadata related to an asset to support easy discovery and access. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Allyson Rosenthal | Portfolio | Visual Navigation in Online Help Documentation | Design of page-level visual cues that show users where they are and what they should do next on the product help site. This project applies cognitive science principles to support users in navigating complex information spaces and empower them to solve problems on their own. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sae Saito | Developing Information Dashboards for Analysis of E-Commerce Performance | Tokyo Otaku Mode currently does not have a comprehensive visualization of their e-commerce website performance, and is seeking for ways to effectively analyze and present the data. The goal of this project is the full integration of information dashboards that will allow Tokyo Otaku Mode to easily access information within the data sets they collect for better decision making on the marketing strategies. First, I determined the key performance indicators that provide insights on the performance of Tokyo Otaku Mode Shop. Then, I designed and built information dashboards to visually present these indicators on Google Spreadsheet. I also designed an information dashboard prototype using Tableau to recommend implementing Tableau or other Business Intelligence tools. Finally, I developed documentation for using and managing the information dashboard. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |||
| Akash Shetye | Portfolio | Developing an Open-Source Accessibility Toolkit for Unity3D Games | Accessibility landscape in gaming is a particularly underserved area. The project will provide game developers an open-source accessibility library for providing screen-reader support in WebGl distributions of Unity3D games. Screen-reader accessibility tools for game development for WebGl distributions are non-existent, requiring game developers to develop home grown solutions. This presents a high barrier to entry for game developers in developing accessibility support for their games. This effort is a small contribution towards enriching the accessibility ecosystem in gaming, with the vision that it will serve as a starting point and an umbrella initiative for projects addressing other areas of gaming accessibility. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kerry Sim | Portfolio | Designing a Function-Based Records Taxonomy for Human Resources Records | My project is designing a function-based records taxonomy for Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Human Resources department. The Human Resources department is using Microsoft SharePoint as its document management system and is facing several challenges with its employee benefit records such as lifecycle management, access & control, and search & retrieval of the records. A function-based records taxonomy aims to address these issues as it provides an easy-to-use classification system that supports proper retention and disposition of the records, establishes a secure access and control, and enables a more efficient search and retrieval process. The methods used to design the taxonomy include: assessing the existing records classification system, conducting Human Resources staff interviews, identifying the major business functions, developing a function-based records taxonomy, and generating a set of recommendations for implementation. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Prachi Singh | Portfolio | Implementation of Enterprise Architecture at Austin Energy | In a large organization like Austin Energy with up to 20 Business Units (BUs), it is difficult to have a centralized repository of all the systems and applications that the BUs use. It is essential for the Enterprise Architects to have this knowledge for planning the Technology Roadmaps(TR) of the organization. Enterprise architecture is a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes. Enterprise Architecture phase II at Austin Energy, the project that I worked in, aims at putting together all these information, system integrations and projects planned that impact the TR. A SharePoint site was utilized to build this repository. Modeling the data and its standardization and normalization required a great deal of effort to make it adaptable by all the BUs. I interviewed several employees to gather information on integration and created integration diagrams using Visio. I developed a dashboard to track the progress of the data collected so far and its quality. The dashboard shows that there is not sufficient knowledge about a few critical departments that I aim to work on in the coming weeks. As we are progressing towards the end of this phase, we are identifying data model issues and a lack of taxonomy that needs to be addressed as we face them. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Minjeong Song | Portfolio | How I Learned to Love Event-Based Retention in Records Management | For many organizations, it's a painful approach to managing records because of the frequency of the retention periods. Event-Based Retention (EBR) can be defined as the process by which the disposition of records is linked to a particular trigger event, such as project closure or employee termination, rather than simple time-based periods. I evaluated Valero's existing Records Retention Schedule (RRS) and analyzed the EBR periods. Considering trigger dates, retention instructions, and the volume of records affected by EBR periods, I was able to determine which of several recommended practices are most suitable and best fit for their unique records management environment. Find out how I performed the analysis and implemented the desired changes collaborating with the RIMS team. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sishir Sreekumar | Portfolio | Live Data Visualization using Tableau | Office of Institutional Reporting, Research and Information Systems | The IRRIS department at the University is responsible for making institutional data available to its end users. It provides official, accurate, and unbiased information and analysis about the university in support of institutional planning, decision-making, and reporting obligations. IRRIS is currently building a new data warehouse that will hold the University's academic and administrative data. Tableau is the tool of choice for delivering the product (reports and dashboards) to its end users, since it is an easy to use intuitive data visualization tool which enables its users to develop interactive visualizations. My capstone project involves me supporting the IRRIS department by developing Tableau visualizations that answer strategic business questions by connecting it directly to the data warehouse and providing live interactive visualizations to the campus stakeholders and data analysts. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Xin Su | Portfolio | Website Update of GivePulse | My task is to add the platform for users so that they could self-organize into different communities on the website of GivePulse. In this project, I am responsible to develop wizards to create and edit communities on GivePulse web page based on consumer demands using PHP, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, SASS, MySQL, create community view with searchable map display and other community details applying Google Maps API and maintain the databases to manage community events, groups, and memberships in MySQL. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kyle Swartzlender | Portfolio | Providing Access to the Freud Reia Punk Collection | Working with the collection materials from the Freud Reia Punk Collection at the University of Texas Libraries, this capstone project consisted of creating a full inventory of the collection's 45s, zines, letter correspondences, and other punk ephemera. Additionally, two curated exhibitions of highlights from the collection were organized, a physical exhibit in the Perry Castaeda Library Scholars Commons and an online presentation of materials executed in Scalar, accessible through the University of Texas Libraries' website. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Amy Tillman | Future Ready Libraries (School Library Practicum) | I completed my School Library Practicum at Cedar Creek Elementary School and Hill Country Middle School in the Eanes Independent School District. Some highlights of the practicum include makerspace Fridays, author visits, poetry special projects, and library database exploration. I am also a member of the EISD Library Symposium group, a committee formed to conduct a needs analysis of EISD district libraries. As part of this committee, we discussed current library standards and trends, visited twelve area libraries, and are now meeting to create a school bond proposal for library upgrades. | Spring 2018 | School Library Practicum | |||
| Shang-Chia Tseng | Portfolio | UX Design: A Mobile Application of Automated Medical Transcription | Currently, physicians have to spend significant time on writing medical documents or typing transcriptions in front of computers after visiting each patient. This routine task exhausts physicians since it requires extra effort and extreme amount of time to make patient stories into standard medical reports. To solve this issue, I prototyped a mobile application, Smart Scribe, which bases on the technology of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to help physicians dictate and digitize patient documents when they diagnose their patients. Physicians can also review and edit the documents on the app before they submit medical reports to the electronic medical record (EMR) system.Automated medical transcription application will not only facilitate doctors focusing on their patients but also promote better communication by easily sharing digitized documentation within hospitals which will benefit both stakeholders of physicians and patients. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Mythraye Vodnala | Portfolio | Alumni Engagement Score Model | Data mining techniques and Statistical methods have found their way into a wide range of applications. We have a database of UT donors, but there are no statistical methodology in place to identify potential major donors (gift >= $100k). The objective of this project is to establish a robust engagement score which could help in creating strong predictive model for identifying major donors. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Lindsay Woodward | Portfolio | Creating Workflow Visualizations for the Data Enrichment Process | I created process documentation for the taxonomy, strategy, and curation divisions of the data enrichment team at Groupby, an e-commerce search company. These workflow visualizations serve as documentation pieces, as ways to examine and optimize workflows, and as a means to present complicated processes both internally to employees and externally to clients. My process for creating the workflows included interviewing employees, synthesizing the interview data, sketching diagrams, soliciting feedback, and finally uploading the workflows and accompanying documentation to the company knowledge management system. I also performed a content audit of the company Google Drive and made recommendations for improved document findability. Both of these undertakings have improved the information management of the organization and will continue to serve as guides for further documentation. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Yueyang Wu | Portfolio | Support Portal Redesign | This project improves the interaction process for the current support desk portal, making it adhere to the brand, and make it more simple and user friendly. Simplifying the workflow will improve user experience for volunteers and event organizers to better access to content that can hopefully help answer their questions and learn more about GivePulse. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kaijuan Xing | Portfolio | Chatbot Evaluation Metrics Collection | AT&T | Chat as a traditional way of communication largely happens among people. AT&T, as a large corporation realize the importance to automate traditional customer support handling, encouraged more than 1500 chatbots built internally at one platform.The problem recently is that the chatbot platform needs to manage the status or activities of all bots while chatbot developers need more feedback about the user experience and bot performance. As a part of chatbot analytics project, I started by generating evaluation metrics from the perspective of chatbot platform, chatbot developers and chatbot project managers and made a MVP(minimal viable product). I teamed up with project managers, system architecture people and analytics experts to create a metric capability list from raw data source to analytics method. The metrics capability list mainly includes bot usage metrics, bot user metrics, access metrics, client metrics, financial metrics and efficiency metrics. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shishu Yang | Portfolio | Design for Education of Personal Development & Wellness for UT Student-Athletes | Due to the tight schedule and stressful lives of UT student athletes, the Student-Athlete Behavioral Health Department decided to build a system that will provide student-athletes with wellness and personal development presentations on their device - instead of in person. In order to better design the video education experience of the ios APP, I started from conducting competitive analysis for existing video education platforms, contextual inquiry & research of student athletes, as well as usability testing in later design stages to prototyping. With the help of results from research, I created personas, storyboards & student athletes scenarios and accordingly built the wireframes. With each usability testing insights, I modified prototypes into better versions every time and finally delivered the high-fidelity prototypes. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Zequn Ye | Portfolio | Data Visualization and Prototyping Project | A prototype demo showcase of utilizing machine learning to help clients monitor supply chain health, deal with anomalies, and proactively plan for future risks. | Spring 2018 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Mary Ziolkowski | Empowering Student Authors | I completed my school librarian practicum of 160 hours at Hornsby Dunlap Elementary School and Del Valle High school. At both libraries I assisted in and took the lead in teaching library lessons, as well as learning library management skills. I put a special focus on encouraging all students to think of themselves as authors and help facilitate class and individual books. | Spring 2018 | School Library Practicum | |||
| Raiye Adeleye | Portfolio | Moving Into Alignment: The Fundamental Elements of Love | The University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts | This thesis project imagines future possibilities of humanity for Black women of the African Diaspora. It provides a lay of the land of decolonial projects in Latin American and Information Studies, suggesting alternative directions, strategies and methods for the work. These directions are guided by the knowledges of my ancestors. Using a spiritual-cosmological-pedagogical approach to ground endogenous epistemologies of Black Women in the African Diaspora, the fundamental elements of love connect us back to the elements of nature, so that we may move into alignment. This thesis imagines future possibilities for Black women that help us to save our own lives and live well. | Spring 2017 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Jennifer Allen | Portfolio | AILLA's Island Move: Metadata Documentation | The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America | The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) migrated from a home-grown legacy digital repository system to an Islandora digital repository; this move involved extensive restructuring of the descriptive, administrative, and technical metadata for collections and media files. The project developed a plan for and created user-friendly and sustainable metadata documentation for AILLA staff and depositors. A holistic documentation plan and model guidelines and tutorials contribute to efficiencies in AILLA maintenance, facilitate increased usage of the repository, and serve as a model for other repositories in the local and disciplinary landscape. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Edward Babbe | Port Poisson Matrix Factorization Topic Model to Scala | Applied Research Laboratories | ARL:UT with UT Austin (ECE and IROM) has developed a Poisson matrix factorization model for modeling documents and related information. It receives an input of documents with words in each document and the frequency with which the words appear. The output is probabilities a topic appears in a document and probabilities a word appears in a topic. This can be parsed to reveal the topics that are most represented in the group of documents and the words associated with these topics. However, this model was poorly written in C++ with little commenting and documentation, and it is also limited by few support from the developer community as the project grew in scope. Thus the goal of the project is to improve the model from a C++ procedural implementation to a more maintainable model, running on the JVM. Originally, the model ran as a C++ executable which uses the GNU Scientific Library (GSL) for probability function calls. Now, all code has been ported to Scala, has been commented out and properly documented, optimized for better efficiency, and has utilized the build tool Maven for all library dependencies. Moving forward, goals include applying this logic to other models for interactions and also for integration with Apache Spark. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Suzanne Becker | Portfolio | Developing a Controlled Vocabulary for the Digital Online Repository of the Outreach Department at the Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired | Texas School for the Blind & Visually Impaired | I created a controlled vocabulary of more than 400 terms for over 3,000 objects in the digital online repository at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. The controlled vocabulary will enable staff to search for detailed information when creating training materials about individuals who are blind/ visually impaired as well as the general field of blindness and visual impairment to share with clients, families, colleagues and legislators. I also identified approximately 500 objects from the collection to weed based on an absence of media releases, individuals who were not allowed to appear in media being present in the media, poor quality of data and redundancy of content. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Calvin Bench | Portfolio | 360 Video at the Harry Ransom Center | Harry Ransom Center | 360 video is an immersive new platform that allows remote viewers a robust experience. This project involves showcasing aspects of the Harry Ransom Center including an exhibition, its opening party, and the spaces around the center. Part of this project also involves an inspection of marketing potential with the 360 video platform. The idea is that showing an audience rich, immersive video will entice them to physically visit the premises. As content competes for people's attention, it's important to offer consumers a compelling experience and 360 video is an emerging technology that is worth exploring. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Ryan Blake | Lost Voices: Rediscovering the Texas Folk Art Survey | Texas Folklife | Lost Voices: Rediscovering the Texas Folk Art Survey is an audio and image digitization project that preserves the Texas Folk Art Survey. In the three decades since it was conducted in 1984, the recorded interviews, photographs, and related materials have remained in analog form, mostly unknown and inaccessible. "Lost Voices" ensures long-term digital preservation of this important snapshot of a much-changed state and its people, and will make its content accessible to researchers, ethnographers, and to the very population from which it sprang: the people of Texas. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| David Bliss | Portfolio | Automating description at the East Austin Digital Archive, St. Edward's University | St. Edward's University | For this project, I described over 6,000 digital images and PDF files housed at the East Austin Digital Archive (EADA). Using only the file structure and names, I extracted descriptive metadata at scale, without the need to closely review or individually describe the items in the collection. This was achieved using OpenRefine scripts, which can be extracted and easily applied to future additions to the collection. Finally, I produced a filenaming guide which will be provided to future students creating materials for the EADA, in order to ensure their additions can be easily ingested using the same metadata structure.The East Austin Digital Archive, based out of St. Edward's University, is an ongoing student- and community-driven digital archives project documenting ongoing gentrification in Austin. My capstone supervisor is Kim Garza, associate professor of Graphic Design at St. Edward's. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Julie Brown | Portfolio | Writing a Collection Development Plan for an Academic Library | Huston-Tillotson University | The objective for this project was to create a comprehensive collection development plan for the Downs-Jones Library (DJL). First, I completed a literature review on collection development methods, then selected several methods to gather data: interviewing DJL librarians, conducting a faculty survey/meeting, and carrying out a syllabus study. I also weeded and assessed select subject areas to familiarize myself firsthand with the collection. After analyzing and discussing the collected data with my field supervisor, I wrote a collection development plan that achieves several goals: to describe the existing collection, its purpose, and the community it serves; to explain the selection and deselection criteria for library materials; and to provide direction for continued collection development. It is my hope that this plan will help DJL staff shape a collection that is relevant and responsive to the needs of the HT community. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Tingting Cai | Portfolio | Design a Classroom Observation Tool for Round Rock ISD | Round Rock ISD | The classroom observation tool I designed for Round Rock ISD is a web-based application that will replace paper forms researchers are using for observation activities. Numerous features are embedded in the prototype to help Round Rock ISD perform the daily work in a more efficient and delightful way. I conducted three rounds of research and design iterations with meticulous planning and implementation of UX methods. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Debbie Chavez | Collaborating With Teachers to Motivate Students | The University of Texas at Austin's School of Information | Studies have shown that instructional partnerships between school librarians and teachers lead to increased student success in school. I partnered with several teachers in the Round Rock Independent School District to connect reluctant readers with a "just right" book, to provide an enrichment experience for fourth graders by establishing a book club, and to connect students in a middle school Spanish Club with students in Guatemala. | Spring 2017 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Yi-Tzu Cassandra Chen | The Democratization of Taiwan: a Digital Collection | The University of Texas Libraries | The East Asian program under the UT Libraries owns a special collection of videos, audio tapes and rare magazines in which the democratization of Taiwan was documented. Many of these materials are in fragile formats and were not available in the major media sources. This project aims to digitize and catalog these valuable materials in order to make it accessible to the public through UT libraries' online catalog. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Elyse Chevallier | Portfolio | Talking about Zines: Creating a Zine Catalog for Town Talk Library | Austin Fanzine Project | This project involved building a searchable, user-friendly online catalog to facilitate management of and access to Town Talk Library's Contemporary Collection (a teach collection of about 100 zines and artist books). The project included developing a metadata schema and building a user-friendly search interface, enabling online access to Town Talk's collection for research, teaching, and those interested in zine production and community. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Andrew Childress | Portfolio | A New Digital Archive for an East Austin Neighborhood: Defining Technical Requirements, Evaluating Unprocessed Collections, and Building a Prototype | St. Edward's University | This project contributes to the East Austin Digital Archive (EADA), a nascent community archive project hosted by St. Edward's University. I worked with a professor and staff at St. Edward's to define the technical requirements for an Omeka-based digital archive that will be able to accept digital items from the community and display time-stamped multimedia materials overlaid on a web map of the neighborhood. The final deliverables for this project were (1) a working prototype of the digital archive and (2) a comprehensive report detailing how I created the prototype, including technical architecture decisions and data cleaning workflows; why I made the choices I did; and my recommendations for future expansions of the archive. In addition to the work related technical architecture and data cleaning, I created a digital archival version of a tumblr page with 308 gifs created by students at St. Edward's and analyzed the metadata of over 7,000 for inclusion in the archive. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Victoria Clancy | Preparing to Implement a Digital Asset/Archive Management System at the State Bar of Texas | The State Bar of Texas | The State Bar of Texas Archive is preparing to purchase a new Digital Asset or Archive Management software for the purpose of providing public access to select collection material and supporting the standardization and efficiency of archival processes. Prior to the software being purchased and implemented the archive must send a request for proposal to potential service providers. This project provided the research and preparation necessary to identify and evaluate service providers; identify and prioritize detailed functional requirements for the software; identify and document other requests or needs of the archive. As a result of my work the archive has all the documentation necessary to submit request for proposals to providers, including an assessment of the current file system; an assessment of potential providers with recommendations; and detailed system requirement documentation. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Kit Coates | Practicum in School Libraries: Davis Elementary and Lanier High School | Davis Elementary | I completed 160 hours working in an elementary and high school library. This experience included assisting with and leading library lessons, as well as learning school library management. | Spring 2017 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Megan Coupe | School Library Practicum | Austin Independent School District | I interned in a High School library for 80 hours and in an Elementary library for 110 hours. | Spring 2017 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Daniel Duncan | Portfolio | Creating software for detecting landslide and wildfire potential | Applied Research Laboratories' Space and Geophysics Lab | This project consisted of creating Government off-the-shelf (GOTS) software for indicating landslide and wildfire potentials. Currently, there is an existing production system but it is primarily a manual operation that is very labor intensive. This work was conducted with a team of scientists and software developers to implement a software solution that automates the manual system currently in operation. Having a system to automate this process will increase the efficiency significantly allowing the production team to further and better analyze the landslide and wildfire potential models. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Allen Fernandes | Developing User-Friendly Ways to Communicate with Hardware Devices | Intersil (A Renesas Company) | I am developing a Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool using Kivy, a Python based UI framework. This tool will help customers (hardware engineers) communicate with the connected device in a user-friendly way.It will be a self-contained tool, i.e. it will have no dependencies. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Laura Gienger | Portfolio | Artists' Books at the Fine Arts Library: A Guide to Promoting Visibility and Access | The University of Texas Libraries' Fine Arts Library | Artists' books present a unique challenge when it comes to promoting their visibility and access in an academic library setting. This project consists of a survey of the current collection at the Fine Arts Library, comparisons with similar collections at other institutions, a curated exhibit of artists' books selected from the collection, instruction sessions co-taught with the Fine Arts librarian, the creation of an Artists' Books Lib Guide, and a detailed report of recommendations for facilitating visibility and access to the collection. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Elizabeth Harp | Portfolio | Research and Planning on a Mobile App for Expectant Fathers | The University of Texas at Austin's Moody College of Communication | The goal of this mobile app is to help normalize fatherhood in Texas by changing expectant fathers' attitudes and behaviors towards their involvement in prenatal care. I performed background research and interviews to gain insight on what type of functionality the app would need. Then, I developed business requirements and a product roadmap for the development team. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Nathan Heep | Portfolio | Information Display: The Spiro Exhibition | National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum | Information displays can provide unique opportunities to help audiences learn about a given subject or domain. The purpose of this project is to create an information display for the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum's exhibition "Spiro and the Mississippian World," set to release in 2019. The exhibition is scheduled to maintain artifact assemblages from the Spiro Mounds site and will detail its life-cycle from construction episodes circa 1000 AD to excavations in the 1930s. The primary goal of the information display is to serve as an interactive map that helps museum patrons learn more about the Mississippian world outside of the Spiro site, such as prominent cities, important trade routes, and art styles spanning wide regions. A secondary goal is to create a generic information framework that could be similarly used in other exhibitions. Methodologically, this project draws on various tools used from Design Thinking such as competitive analysis, journey mapping, personas, and user scenarios. The final deliverable for this project is a medium to high fidelity prototype that will undergo further development as we move toward the exhibition's release. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Katelyn Helberg | Developing a Pilot Program for Library Instruction at Dell Medical School | Dell Medical School Library | This project has focused on the development and delivery of six instructional modules targeted to provide information literacy and research instruction to the inaugural class of medical students at Dell Medical School. A survey instrument was developed to gauge students' interests, and the results were used to inform the selection of topics for each module. Analyzing the successes and pain points of this pilot allow us to be forward thinking about how library instruction can be improved to scale as more cohorts of medical students matriculate. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Katie Hicks | Portfolio | Designing a First-Time User Experience | Indeed.com | A great first-time user experience is one of the most important factors for increasing user retention. For my capstone project, I explored the first-time user experience for employers posting a job on Indeed.com. In my approach, I employed a full user experience design process. I started by utilizing user research methods such as competitive analysis, literature review, and reviewing exploratory research conducted by Indeed's user researchers. Then, I completed two design iterations of prototyping and user testing. The final product of my capstone project is an interactive high fidelity prototype that focuses on successfully onboarding new employers to Indeed. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Chung-Yu Ho | User experience design and improvement for machinery tools app and business process | Motionics LLC | Motionics, LLC is a start-up offering smart tools for monitoring and diagnostics of machinery. The objective of this project is to design and improve the wireless dimensional measurement mobile app user experience. I will achieve that objective by generating concepts, flow, a sitemap, and a storyboard based on requirements and by designing wireframes and prototypes from low-to-high levels. User-central design methodologies will be incorporated to improve existing and innovative new features to make users' lives easier, to make their work more efficient by reducing pain points in their daily routines, and to bridge the gap between their current flow and their ideal flow. During the project, a customer journey map was created aiming at helping us better understand the process of business and the workflow of the app from the very beginning touch points to the usage scenario in order to gain a board overview about the product and the app. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Qihang Hu | Database Management for Austin's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem | The University of Texas at Austin's IC2 Institute | As a part of the research project on Austin's Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, my task is to support the database management with my technical skills, including data gathering, data analyzing, creating database, designing and developing user-friendly interface. The optimal goal of this project is a web-based database management system, developed with PHP and MySQL. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Nicolette Khan | Portfolio | Designing a Centralized Database for the Texas After Violence Project | Texas After Violence Project | The classroom observation tool I designed for Round Rock ISD is a web-based application that will replace paper forms researchers are using for observation activities. Numerous features are embedded in the prototype to help Round Rock ISD perform the daily work in a more efficient and delightful way. I conducted three rounds of research and design iterations with meticulous planning and implementation of UX methods. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Nikole Koehlert | Portfolio | A Strategic Plan for Digitization and Access: The Blanton Museum of Art | The Blanton Museum of Art | Addressing the needs of the Blanton Museum of Art, I am creating a strategic plan for the digitization of over 18,000 object files dating from the 1960s-present using a hierarchical file structure, devising a file-naming taxonomy, and creating a metadata database to document the workflow. PDF files with OCR and master tiff files stored on a dedicated server and back up drive will significantly increase access. The project will set in motion a sustainable workflow that will benefit all Blanton Museum stakeholders going forward as their collection grows. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Xuechen Li | Portfolio | Calm HipChat: A New Design of the Chat Tool for Teams | Atlassian | The growth of group chat tools fills the gap where email is lacking the ability to make communications instant and direct. HipChat is a market-leading chat tool by Atlassian and the employees at Atlassian rely heavily on HipChat to get their work done. To make HipChat fit better into people's workflows, I conducted observations, interviews, and online survey internally among the Atlassian employees. The research mainly focused on the context of HipChat usage which includes window arrangement and task management. Among the several interesting insights I gained from the research, the most important one is that HipChat is bringing too much information to people at work that they lose the balance between being informed and being focused. So I generated the idea of a calm design: the feature allows people to prioritize their work and save things for later; it helps people keep the memory of less frequent contacts with ease; it cleans the valuable space on name lists for better access to certain people. I made a high-fidelity prototype to demonstrate this idea and tested it among people inside and outside of the company. It was proved to be a highly executable solution to the problems. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Yanxian Liu | Dashboard Development for GivePulse | GivePulse, Inc. | GivePulse is a platform that enables everyone to volunteer and make a difference by allowing anyone to find, submit and request cause-related events and opportunities to improve local communities. This project aims to improve and enhance the existing dashboard system for the GivePulse website by leveraging various front-end development technology and data analysis skills. The main achievement of the project is the feature of displaying external datasets on the same heatmap/cluster map for comparing them with GivePulse data. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Justina Moloney | Lest We Forget: A Digital Exhibit of Williamson County from 1917 to 1923 | Williamson Museum | Lest We Forget: A Digital Exhibit of Williamson County from 1917 to 1923 focuses on the historical events that drastically changed a Texas community. Citizens of Williamson County were actively involved in World War I, the Women's Suffrage Movement, and efforts to lesson the sway of the Ku Klux Klan in the area. Utilizing the digital scholarship tool Scalar, this exhibit seeks to inform and educate a high school audience, while exposing students to primary documents and artifacts synonymous with the museum setting, but in the classroom. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Hayley Morgenstern | Portfolio | Genealogies of Trauma: The Inheritance of Hysteria | The University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts | This thesis explores how the body can be used as a technology to record and transmit information about experiences of sexual violence. Biological processes like crying, coughing, and digestion hold visceral knowledge about the endurance of sexual violence. | Spring 2017 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Ashley Morrison | Portfolio | Best Practices for Driving Adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) | The University of Texas Libraries | Open Education Resources (OER) are learning materials that are freely licensed; they can be shared, accessed, reused, and revised. Often, they are available at no cost and can be one lever for decreasing the cost of higher education. Over the semester, I identified instructors at the University of Texas at Austin currently building or utilizing OER as course materials. I held conversations with those instructors to learn more about their use of OER and documented best practices to be utilized by librarians and instructors at UT. I also conducted research on the role that librarians in other higher education institutions have in driving adoption of OER. The ultimate objective of this initiative is to help drive adoption of OER and other open access materials at UT in the long term. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Caroline O'Meara | Portfolio | Strategizing solutions for creating reports and dashboards at Goodwill of Central Texas | Goodwill of Central Texas | At Goodwill of Central Texas, I am working with the IT Department to create reporting solutions with Microsoft SQL Server and Salesforce. I am creating data models, reports, and data visualizations for KPIs across the Goodwill organization, documenting best practices, and exploring automation solutions. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Xiaoyue Pang | Portfolio | Consumer-Generated Content Research: Evaluation of An Existing Review Solicitation Practice | Bazaarvoice | An evaluation of existing review solicitation practices in Bazaarvoice, post-interaction email (PIE) and review submission form (RSF), indicates consumers' pain points/barriers of producing consumer-generated content (CGC) with PIE and RSF. Plus, to gain more consumer-generated content for our clients and design better content-generating experiences for consumers, a prototype with several design solutions was proposed, based on the exploratory research on people's motives, expectations, and behaviors of generating content. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Crystal Paull | Aging Adults and Shopping Cart Abandonment | Express Scripts | My professional experience project examines the result of multiple weeks of coding analysis of shopping cart/checkout abandonment by users, specifically aging adults. The resulting deliverable includes data analysis, next research steps, recommendations, analytics, and examination of the correlation between user satisfaction/experience and conversion of shopping cart. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Sara Pedrosa | Portfolio | Processing East Austin Digital Archive Book Collection | St. Edward's University | Processing the East Austin Digital Archive book collection entailed inventorying the physical and digital book collections, designing a collection arrangement, producing a processing plan, processing the physical assets and creating a finding aid. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Angela Perkins | Edmund W. Gordon Papers - Black Diaspora Archive Audio Digitization Project | Benson Latin American Collection's Black Diaspora Archive | I surveyed, then completed an inventory and analog-to-digital audio transfer for a significant portion of the audio materials contained within the Edmund W. Gordon Papers at the Black Diaspora Archives, which is housed at the Benson Latin American Collection. There are approximately 80 compact audio cassettes, microcassettes, and audio tape reels included within the collection, many of which included minimal or no metadata with its carriers. This project consisted of listening to the audiotapes to assess for content and metadata, and subsequently digitizing the tapes. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Alex Peterson | Portfolio | Adult Programming at the Cedar Park Public Library & Beyond | Cedar Park Public Library | I studied the impact of multiple adult programs currently offered by Cedar Park Public Library to assess their value to the Library. First, I attended and evaluated program evaluations completed by attendees. Then I used these results, community and demographic needs, and my literature review of adult programming research to make recommendations for future programs and how to better their current ones. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Jennifer Raye | HathiTrust Digital Library and the Fair Use Defense | The University of Texas at Austin's School of Information | Preservation and dissemination of information is the cornerstone of most libraries. With the onset of the digital age, libraries of all sizes began scanning and cataloging their older documents and pictures, making them available on the Internet. In 2004, a consortium of 13 university libraries partnered with Google, Inc. began digitizing millions of unique titles, revolving in the HathiTrust Digital Library. In 2012, the Authors Guild filed a lawsuit on behalf of its members against HathiTrust and Google, separately for copyright infringement and unauthorized reproduction. HathiTrust and Google maintained a fair use defense. HathiTrust effectively demonstrated their database and its availability to print-disabled patrons are highly transformative. By digitizing print, analog works, Google was able to create a searchable database of materials. In addition to the search function, libraries are able to use the digitized copy for their print-disabled patrons. The District Court and the Court of Appeals upheld the HathiTrust and Google's fair use defense, the highly transformative use contributing the most to the fair use balance. The HathiTrust and Google decisions demonstrate how fair use applies in the context of digitalization projects within libraries. The HathiTrust decision specifically, serves as a guide for libraries looking to digitize their analog works collections. By maintaining specific characteristics within the digitization process, libraries can maintain copyright law compliance. For example, by restricting reproductions of copyrighted materials for preservation and transformative uses, libraries can maintain exercise fair use practices. Also, seen by the District Court judge as the most important reasons for upholding the HathiTrust, access for the print-disabled communities provides more than just access for a marginalized community, it provides a public good for society. By following some of these conditions, libraries can feel confident going through with a digitization project. | Spring 2017 | Master's Report/Thesis | ||
| Walker Riley | Portfolio | Combating Cyber Threats at ePatientFinder | ePatientFinder | I am working for the healthcare technology company ePatientFinder to develop standard operating procedures that comply with strict security regulations. In addition to writing policies that are security compliant, I have taken on a systems administrative role, which has allowed me to reconfigure several of ePatientFinder's servers with better security hygiene. The goal of this project is to make sure that ePatientFinder passes a SOC 2 security audit. SOC 2 is a highly respected set of security standards that will demonstrate ePatientFinder's dedication to protecting patient data. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Laura Rivoir | Portfolio | Zine Transcription Normalization for Austin Fanzine Project | Austin Fanzine Project | The Austin Fanzine Project is an ongoing digitization project working towards providing the user with a historic snapshot of a volatile local subculture: the Austin underground music scene of the 1990's. Since its inception in 2012, the Austin Fanzine Project has expanded beyond its initial goals of fanzine digitization to providing enhanced user access and community involvement through the adoption of data visualization techniques, crowdsourced transcription and indexing efforts and, most recently, a collaboration with the Early Modern OCR Project. As my role in furthering these goals and streamlining crowdsourcing efforts, I created a set of transcription and indexing guidelines for users, so that resulting crowdsourced data is accurate, consistent, and true to the intent and feel of the original cultural material. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Juliette Seive | Portfolio | Curations 3 Usability Study: Collecting and Curating Content Effectively | Bazaarvoice | Curations 3 - a newly revamped Bazaarvoice product - helps brands and retailers collect and curate social media content. This approved content is then displayed on brand and/or retailer websites, which helps to-be customers see other, real-life customers experience products. To ensure that this new Curations 3 tool is what Bazaarvoice clients need, a complete usability study including task creation, moderation sessions, and data analysis was completed to help create the best experience possible. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Nandini Sharma | SongFlock: A Web-Based Song Learning Tool for Guitarists | The University of Texas at Austin's School of Information | SongFlock is a web-based song learning tool for guitarists. It allows guitarists to play along with the original track and refer to the video tutorials at the same time and in one place. The video links are crowd sourced and appropriately tagged by musicians for every single song that the website streams. As a part of a team course project in "human computation and crowdsourcing" I was able to crowdsource the youtube video-tutorial links of over 100 songs. This capstone project has allowed me to develop a working prototype of this application. Going forward, I look forward to developing a fully fledged website that would host the data gathered earlier. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Chen-Chun Shen | Portfolio | iTester 3 Usability Study | eMetric | iTester is eMetric's online learning performance assessment product which provides a reliable and secure environment that allows students to take tests online. I conducted a study which improved the user experience of iTester 3 as well as reduced biases and increased assessment accuracy. The process included stages of heuristic evaluation, competitive analysis, concept generation, redesign, interactive prototype, and usability testing of the final product. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Anshulika Singh | Portfolio | Improving the User Experience of the iSchool Career Development Office | The University of Texas at Austin's School of Information's Career Development Office | The purpose of this research project is to identify ways to improve the user experience of the iSchool Career Development Office. The iSchool's MSIS program, being a multidisciplinary program, poses a challenge for the iSchool Career Development office in terms of serving the varied career needs of its students. This study was conducted to understand the effectiveness of existing services offered by the iSchool Career Development Office and recommend improvement. This research will provide valuable information regarding the Career Development Office's resources, systems and tools to support students' varied and unique career needs. The results of this study will improve and enhance the existing services in order to better service iSchool students. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Shambhavi Srivastava | Enabling and Enhancing Data Visualization and Business Analysis at IPEX | IPEX | The aim of this project is to develop the internal application tracking system of the client with an advance search bar and algorithm to rank and tag the candidate's profile according to the key terms entered by the user. The second part of the project includes developing a marketing research analysis of IPEX's current database on the basis of the number of candidate profiles successfully hired by the given client. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Chris Stenftenagel | Updating and Digitizing LBJ Library Finding Aids | LBJ Presidential Library and Museum | I am assisting the LBJ Library with its digitization initiative to provide researchers details on its list of holdings via the new DiscoverLBJ.org website. The goal of my capstone project is to create a new finding aid template for the personal papers collections and develop and document a process to publish the revised finding aids to the new website. The newly created finding aids will be used by researchers to browse online the LBJ Library's collections and holdings. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Jenny Stirrat | Portfolio | Developing a Community of Readers | Reagan Early College High School | When I became the librarian at Reagan Early College High School two years ago, my goal was not only to update the campus' reception of the library, but also to bring students together to form a palpable culture of literacy. Promotional efforts around campus and on social media, the creation of student-friendly book displays, strategic collection development, and the establishment of a book club have all helped to enliven the library atmosphere and create a community of readers bound by their love of books. | Spring 2017 | School Library Practicum | |
| Sara Thompson | Portfolio | Rejuvenating a Tired School Library | The University of Texas at Austin's School of Information | Bastrop Intermediate School is a 5th and 6th grade campus with almost 800 students. Since last August, I have been the librarian there, working on updating the aged collection, especially the science section, adding Maker books and materials with which to make, and collaborating with teachers who have not collaborated with a librarian in past years. | Spring 2017 | School Library Practicum | |
| Robina Torres | Portfolio | The McNay Art Museum Computer Media Inventory | McNay Art Museum | The McNay Art Museum was the first museum of modern art in Texas, endowed by Marion McNay upon her death in 1950. It has been a popular institution in San Antonio since it first opened in 1954. I was asked to create a complete inventory of their digital media, a first for them. This includes both processed and unprocessed collections, which meant I got to go through their entire collection searching for the media. The information collected was put on spreadsheet in Excel for making assessments on whether these items need to be digitally preserved or thrown out. The inventory shows how much of each type of media they have in their collections, which will help the McNay with grant funding for digital preservation. None of that can be done without an accurate inventory to start from. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Brandt Van Unen | Portfolio | Archiving the Texas Architect | This capstone project is comprised of the formulation and implementation of physical, digital, and web archives for the Texas Society of Architects. The primary focus is the Texas Architect magazine issues from the 1950s to the present, including - digitization, metadata records, preservation plan, and web archive development. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | ||
| Nitin Verma | Portfolio | Using Eye Tracking to Study User Experience on Scrollable Webpages | The University of Texas at Austin's School of Information | This report describes the use of eye trackers to study user experience on scrollable webpages. In particular I focus on the eye tracking software EventIDE, which allows researchers to create experiments that can adapt to the participants' responses. EventIDE allows for this adaptation by enabling researchers to embed C# code into the experiment design. This embedded code can be used to define conditions to adapt or alter the sequence of stimuli presented to participants. Additionally, EventIDE can be used to define custom Areas of Interest (AOIs) to study gaze patterns and eye fixations on particular areas of webpages. | Spring 2017 | Master's Report/Thesis | |
| Shengwei Wang | Portfolio | Mobile Registration | Digital Factory | Design and implement mobile registration process in AWS and databases. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Morgen Wilson | A Tale of Two Libraries | McCallum High School | Over the course of the semester I've completed a practicum in two very different libraries, Summitt Elementary School and McCallum High School. The poster will document my experience and completed projects. | Spring 2017 | School Library Practicum | ||
| Yimeng Zhao | Portfolio | Student Behavior Prediction for Pairing | PenPal Schools | PenPal Schools help students find PenPals and provide a platform where PenPals collaborate through high-quality online courses to discover cultures and learn about global challenges while practicing essential communication and technology skills. My project is to predict students' behavior -- whether the student is a good communicator. Students' behaviors are predicted by analyzing data extracted from PostgreSQL. The project is finished by using jupyter notebook in python. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project | |
| Zhenzhi Zhu | Portfolio | Competitive study of digital pens for smart desk. | Dell | This is a competitive study of the Dell digital pen and other digital pens designed for artists and designers. The focus of this project is the performance of digital pen in smart desk. | Spring 2017 | Professional Experience Project |
iSchool Capstone Archive
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