Academics:  Bachelor of Science in Informatics

Information plays a significant role in our daily professional and personal lives and we are constantly challenged to take charge of the information that we need for work, fun and everyday decisions and tasks. But, what happens when the answers to these questions can only be found by taking into consideration the Personal Information Management (PIM) style of another individual? The purpose of this study is to identify the influences of individual PIM styles when couples acquire, organize, use, re-use, and eventually discard household information. The results of this study may help developers realize that a market exist for a product to meet these emerging needs.

The traditional spiral-bound notebook and pencil are giving way to laptops and Tablet-PCs in some technology-focused classrooms. This study will try to find which tradeoffs exist between taking notes on different mediums. We will be looking at different opinions and preferences of current University of Washington students, in which we will hope to identify how students decide a method for note-taking and to identify the tradeoffs between traditional forms of note-taking and the various digital alternatives.

Intellectual Property Rights (patents, trade secrets and copyrights) have gained much attention over the past few years with the explosion of information dissemination and recent expansion of patents to cover processes and trade secrets to include software source code. The focus of this study is to explore the interaction of Intellectual Property with Human Rights. This study will help to create a dialog over questions including, but not limited to: Do trade secrets interact with freedom of expression? Do patents influence individual’s health and well-being? How do trade secrets interact with freedom of expression? Results of these interviews and the literature review may provide ideas on how to balance competing interest or use right structures to support mutual interests.