Academics:  Master of Science in Information Management

By Kevin O'Halloran'
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Microsoft’s platform for creating intranets is SharePoint. Like other teams within Microsoft, the MSN Internet Access (MSNIA) Team uses SharePoint to manage internal content such as specifications, test documentation, and reports, amid a number of linked team intranet sites. Despite its many advantages, the usefulness of SharePoint as a content- and workflow-management tool appears to degrade as sites proliferate and are managed in an ad hoc fashion. The MSNIA Team is responsible for narrowband dial-up Internet access to MSN, and will soon offer “WIFI” access to the Internet as well. For this Capstone Project, we propose an analysis of the current SharePoint installation within MSNIA.

By John Ison
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The Archive Project is a custom data management and reporting system designed to support a doctoral student in her dissertation research in the field of medieval womens studies. It was created using the Evolutionary Prototyping methodology in conjunction with an Entity-Attribute Value Design to allow for rapid deployment and real-time customization.

By Sheila Underwood
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Seattle University School of Law has thirty years worth of records, publications, photos and video stored in office filing systems, on servers and on personal hard-drives. The Archiving Study focused on identifying these assets and determining strategies for preserving them. Requirements were developed for digitally archiving a subset of assets that were of high value to multiple departments.

By J. Gerahty
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The Quick Information Database is a presentation describing the inception, development and execution of a web-based database application. The database artifacts are anecdotal information of regional significance recorded by Seattle Times Reporters over a 70 year period.

By Sammie Nai-Lin Chang
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The Cosmos Group is comprised of three business units and all of them host both in Canada and Taiwan. Their current problem is that they don’t have a central repository to collect and retrieve information and there is no effective way to update case status synchronously. The purpose of this project was to design a web-based information system to help Cosmos staff (sales representative, customer service representative and consultant) both in Canada and Taiwan to immediately access the specific information they need - collect, share and retrieve customer data and track case status.

By Cindy Mitchell, Madhuri Pinnamaneni, and Ann Samuelson
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This project was undertaken to create and test an information assessment tool with reuse potential. Ann Samuelson, Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center, has a project requiring the ability to evaluate existing data sources or new data source requests for redundancy. Cindy Mitchell, Alaska Airlines, has a project requiring the ability to identify the future customer information requirements within the organization dealing specifically with the information gaps in existing data sources. By focusing on the information needs, the team (which included Madhuri Pinnamaneni) was able to develop, test and utilize an information assessment framework which has potential for flexible reuse in different environments under different circumstances. The information assessment framework has been successfully used as an initial research tool for both projects.

By Atma Shetty
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With increasingly distributed enterprise software systems, users of ERP systems are finding it difficult to view data from various departments/ branches. The lack of common semantics among multi-database systems used in the different departments adds to the complexity of making sense of the disparate data. One solution to this is the selection and extraction of the critical metadata from these systems and moving into a metadata repository. An XML output will be developed from the data in the repository. This will provide the users a view to the metadata of the ERP systems against their business data and allow them to track any discrepancies in their current business data.

By Zerrin Hejazi, Kenny Lu, and John Tang
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The purpose of this project is to design a constructive ISO17024 standard framework that can be used to assess an organization’s information security domain. The result of the assessment can then be analyzed and used to make recommendations to enhance security or remedy potential security vulnerabilities. The scope of the project starts at the assessment phase and will be complete when the organization is fully compliant with the ISO standard. The benefits of implementing ISO standard include interoperability, reducing technology complexity, streamlining adherence to regulations, and helping ensure that customers, partners, and employees can exchange information securely and productively. Most importantly, it will create new business opportunities with Fortune 500 companies and government agencies as they often require their vendors and partners to be ISO certified before data exchange can be facilitated.

By Pamela Kilborn-Miller
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Is there a need to make it easier to find proven solutions to global challenges in education, environment, health, hunger, poverty, and other areas of concern? The United Nations Development Programme, 11 countries, and 6 U.S. cities participated in a survey to identify how online information can help improve global problem-solving. For example, who needs to know what, when, where, why, and how to help meet the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sustainable development? This Capstone project presents the survey results, plus recommendations, and scenarios for a possible Global Solutions Network that will make it easier to find, compare, and publish “what works” around the world.

By Sandi Kruszenski
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The Society of Actuaries has had a website for a number of years. The website has gotten larger and more complex over time, and portions of this website have become cluttered. My capstone project was to organize the content in one section of the website, create a new navigational structure and improve overall usability. Results of a web-based survey and individual interviews led to the creation of a persona that represents a typical actuary. Using this persona, I developed an enhanced website prototype that included improved organization and navigation, along with suggestions for additional content.

By Michael McCormack and Dina Taylor
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Hardware research and development teams are often called upon to provide information to product planning teams. This information comes from disparate systems, and a variety of formal and informal sources. In many cases, the systems are poorly integrated or nonexistent. This Capstone provides a project plan for collecting, managing and harnessing the data and information necessary using Microsoft Office System 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.

By Audrey Alexander
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For iSchool students, team projects are an integral part of nearly every course across all programs. Technology has the potential to greatly improve the process of successful project collaboration; yet new students may face a confusing array of unfamiliar collaboration support tools from which to choose. Students may also be unaware of the complex organizational factors within the University and the iSchool that influence the choice of tools that are provided to students. This project aims to provide an aid for new iSchool students in choosing an appropriate collaborative technology, as well as valuable information for other UW departments considering offering collaborative tools to support their students.

By
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This Capstone project sought to create a practical metadata schema usable by the Foundation Operations departments of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The business driver behind this project was to improve the findability and management of shared files and information. I gathered stakeholder needs through open-ended interviews. I also completed audit of existing metadata in use by these stakeholders. This information was used to create a draft metamodel and a project plan for its implementation. This project plan can serve as a prototype for future metadata schema projects at the Gates Foundation.

By Jemily Chang and Yueh-Lin Chen
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Renton Technical College Library is a member of ORCA (Library Consortia for Washington State Community College and Technical College). With all the information seeking activities happening in the library, a device for librarians and staff to share professional knowledge and proper path to subject matter experts outside of the organization will greatly help the daily operation of the library. For this capstone project, our team will incorporate the knowledge and research skills we learned from the MSIM curriculum, to collect and analyze data and create metadata schema and build taxonomy to facilitate the access to and dissemination of library operational information. The scope is to finish building of metadata schema and taxonomy for internal knowledge sharing, not include the implementation process.

By Pui Chee Chan
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The UW TechTransfer Digital Venture’s UW Copyright Connection Website provides reference guide on copyright issues to the UW community. Based on anecdotal evidence, users are not getting what they need from the website. This project deploys a proof-of-concept approach: to conduct a usability study prior to the website redesign and assess if the process benefits a small project in a cost-effective manner.

By Randy Pinol and Kathy Richardson
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With the popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) increasing over the past decade, tens of millions of gamers pay $15 to $25 monthly to entertain themselves. The free and fee-based third party websites supporting this ‘gaming lifestyle’ are growing rapidly in number as well. Our Capstone focus was to develop a plan on how to build the “perfect portal” for MMORPGs gamers, using fundamental information management principles.

By Geoff Froh and Michael Braly
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Findability on enterprise intranets has become an increasing critical issue with the growth in both size and complexity of these information environments. To date, most solutions have focused on the construction of rich, domain-specific taxonomies and the development of sophisticated full-text search algorithms. The bottom-up distributed classification – collaborative “tagging” – systems that have emerged from popular websites such as del.icio.us and flickr.com present a novel approach. These applications explicitly leverage user participation and social network effects to create intriguing semantic spaces. Could tagging and sharing bookmarks be used to complement existing findability approaches within an enterprise? How can these new concepts be made both understandable and attractive to corporate stakeholders?

By David Chen and Shawn Shih-Kai Weng
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VoIP is an emerging technology. The motivation for corporations to replace their existing PBX system onto a VoIP system is no longer just the quality of voice or cost reduction. The enterprise is actually looking forward to how a VoIP system can integrate with their existing information system and further utilize the information. Our project objective is aimed at adapting the open source VoIP solution into a middle size company and utilizing its ability to integrate the voice system with their existing information systems, such as HR and inventory systems. By connecting voice together with data/information we hope it will facilitate their business process and allow better use of company information.

By Michael Brown
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The vision of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is one where our country has “an informed society that uses a comprehensive understanding of the role of the oceans, coasts, and atmosphere in the global ecosystem to make the best social and economic decisions.” As means of reaching that vision, the Alaska Fishery Science Center (AFSC) conducts outreach activities. The goal for this project is to complete the planning, analysis, and design phases of a web tool that will support the outreach efforts including the coordination of the outreach events, providing resources for outreach volunteers, and allow the public to find information on AFSC’s outreach activities.

By Kenneth Abrahamsen
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The focus of this capstone project is to utilize many of the user-centered design components covered during the past two years of MSIM courses to design a website for one the Seattle Young American Bowling Alliance leagues. The main focus of the website is to increase league membership, promote league activities, and provide bowler-related information, such as upcoming tournament registration information, personal bowling statistics, and links to other bowling-related Internet resources. The project will encompass a needs assessment and a project scope definition utilizing multiple user-centered design components. The project objectives, goals, and tasks will include the development and administration of a survey to identify user needs and desired functionality of the website, scenarios and persona development, creation of a wire frame model, paper prototyping techniques, develop database entity relationship diagrams, and database schemas.