Showcase of Projects
Students in the capstone Information Systems Applications course collaborate with community based organizations to develop useful information system solutions to meet real management needs. Real world client partnerships are an important part of the program's educational mission, giving students and project sponsors a significant opportunity to work together towards a common goal. Typically, our project clients represent non-profit or charitable organizations, often engaged in missions that benefit the community in significant ways.
If your organization is interested in working with our students for a project, please contact Steve Pajewski, (412) 268-9592, or pajewski@cmu.edu.
This is a small sample of the projects IS students have completed recently.
Light Of Life Event Management System (Fall Semester, 2008)
The Students
Ryan Wong, Kevin Hung, Colin Marks, Stephen Morisson
The Client
Light of Life is a local non-profit organization that serves the homeless and less-fortunate in Pittsburgh through shelter and meal programs.
The Problem
Light of Life relies on large numbers of volunteers to provide services and mentoring to its clientele. Managing volunteer records and assignments of volunteers to events has been a difficult and time consuming process.
The Solution
The team designed and built a 'Volunteer Management System' for Light of Life. This web based application allows individuals to apply as volunteers and request to volunteer online. Volunteer administrators are enabled to manage all events, volunteeers, and volunteer requests through an administrative interface. In addition, an on-site component has been developed to allow for time tracking (check-in, check-out) to be used on-site at every volunteer event. This on-site component utilizes a barcode scanning system for efficient time tracking of volunteers.
IBM Innovations - 2D Barcodes (Fall Semester, 2008)
The Students
David Erfley, Robert Muth, David Yu at Carnegie Mellon University
Mohit Garg, Vivek Khandelwal, Aayush Marodia, Vijay Vadlamani at Singapore Management University
The Client
IBM is a global corporation that provides a diverse range of IT related products and consulting services. IBM Innovations is the research and development arm of the company.
The Problem
IBM Innovations was looking to explore possible applications of 2D barcodes on the web and how they could be used with mobile devices. They were looking for a set of tools demonstrating several methods for translating information into the Data Matrix and QR Code barcode formats.
The Solution
The team delivered a set of web tools with three major components: a web service that can be called by client applications to incorporate barcodes dynamically into different media, a manual interface for encoding textual information into 2D barcode formats, and a browser plugin for end users to take advantage of the barcode technology in encoded URLs.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation (Fall Semester, 2007)
The Students
John Bennett, Norman Bucknor, Daniel Broekman, Jun Park
The Client
The Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Partnership Foundation (JRCPF) was founded by President Carter and his wife Rosalynn, who have spent their lives in service to others. The goal of this foundation is to improve society by promoting partnerships between campuses and their communities through academic service learning (ASL). They promote these partnerships in three ways: they reward campuses that show best practices in campus-community partnerships with a Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Partnership Award (JRCPA), they reward students that show best practices in academic service learning with a Carter Academic Service Entrepreneur (CASE) grant, and they have a community website for academic service learning called ServiceBook.
The Problem
Though the ServiceBook website was already developed, some key functionality was not fully implemented. For instance, ServiceBook.org is the only place where students can apply for CASE grants, and it is also a place where campuses can apply for the JRCPA, but there was no capability in place to handle these applications after they have been submitted through the website. Additionally, the design of the website did not effectively represent the Carter brand or enable easy discovery of content.
The Solution
After reviewing the goals for the ServiceBook website, the team focused on three deliverables that would provide the most benefit for the JRCPF in the time we had for this project. First, we implemented a system that would help manage and dispatch grant applications. Second, we created a new professional design template for the ServiceBook website. Lastly, we restructured the information architecture to make navigation more intuitive and less redundant.
View the result at http://www.servicebook.org/
Shakespeare’s Global Globe (Fall Semester, 2007)
The Students
Lauren Balderston, Jason Choi, Audra Dove, Jinny Yoon
The Clients
Dr. Michael Witmore, Associate Professor in Literary and Cultural Studies, Dr. Suguru Ishizaki, Associate Professor in Rhetoric and Communication Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University
The Problem
The clients’ vision for this project was to create a website where anyone could view the global activity of people who have recently viewed, read, or performed a Shakespearean play. An interactive global map displays points to identify the locations of these people. The clients wanted users to be able to add to the map by choosing the play they are working with and their own location. Users are able to see where else in the world their particular play is being enjoyed. The clients wanted the site to be visually appealing and easily accessible to people all over the world, regardless of what language they speak.
The Solution
The solution we created completely encompasses the clients’ vision to develop a website where people can view Shakespearean activity. We used Yahoo! Maps to generate a customized Flash map that utilizes the functionality required by the clients. We created custom markers for the map that demonstrate the magnitude of users in areas with a greater density of users. The system was built using a Flash interface with an ActionScript backend. Our solution was also built in a highly customizable manner, so that it can be used for media items other than the works of Shakespeare in the future.
View the site at www.orbismundi.org
BibMe.org (Fall Semester, 2007)
The Students
Alvin Fong, Ben Tucker, Kevin Liebler, Saurabh Mundra
The Client
BibMe.org caters to users of high school and college age looking for a tool to help them write their bibliographies. After Bibme.org was launched in May 2007, there was a tremendous response from educators; teachers, and media specialists.
The Problem
Bibliographies are very time consuming to create. This is due to the strict requirements of inclusion for such arcane info as a publisher’s city and very precise formatting for how each entry should be presented. The goal of the BibMe web application is to accelerate the process of writing a bibliography. It does this by automatically filling in the data to complete a bibliography entry. Our service cuts down on a student’s time spent correctly formatting a bibliography letting him/her instead focus on writing a well researched paper.
The Solution
Bibme.org is a free automatic bibliography maker that auto-fills. BibMe features a simple intuitive interface for users to find bibliographical information for their source. We designed BibMe to support the most frequently cited sources our users require. The auto-fill sources supported are Book, Magazine, Newspaper, Website, Journal, and Film. BibMe also supports other frequently cited sources such as Interviews, Radio/TV, and Encyclopedia entries. To be comprehensive, MLA, APA, Chicago and Turabian citation styles have all been implemented.
The BibMe collaboration interface was added after we discovered teachers were beginning to use BibMe in the classroom. What this interface allows a user to do is share their bibliography. When users select share, a URL linking to one of their bibliographies is dynamically generated for them to distribute to other users. From an educational standpoint, this allows teachers to easily distribute a bibliography for a research paper to their students.
View the site at www.bibme.org
New Earth Organization (Fall Semester, 2007)
The Students
Laurence Lau, Justin Lokey, Michael Madvedoff, Brett Weissbart, Namek Zu’bi
The Client
New Earth is a global network that supports local community development around the world. It supports projects that deal with problems of local importance with the main goal of improving social and/or environmental quality of life on the planet. New Earth supports such communities by acting as a global source of funding and providing needed resources such as annual seed funding, while also allowing for reviews by peer communities. However, to become a part of New Earth, the local projects commit to undertaking and documenting within a six-step action research cycle of participatory planning and evaluation, known as the PPE.
The Problem
Given the number of participants over the past few years, and the expected future growth, New Earth required a user-friendly online system to act as a global information hub while also allowing for the efficient tracking and management of local projects. The existing New Earth site needed additional functions, and rework for consistency and quality.
The Solution
Using PHP, the team decided to build a fully open-source online system to enable the efficient management of all vital New Earth project related affairs. The site facilitates the efficient sharing of information within the New Earth community while allowing for the easy creation, management, and tracking of local projects by all participants. Additionally, and due to the large variety of New Earth users, the new site supports multiple languages. Finally, the team implemented an improved database search (using meta-tags technology) and provided technical documentation for future teams.
Sparshlife (Fall Semester, 2007)
The Students
Clinton Loo and Sterling Rice at Carnegie Mellon University
Melissa Ravi and Rajammal Veerappan at Singapore Management University
The Client
Sparshlife is a non-profit organization which provides healthcare options for disadvantaged children and women in India. T he organization’s primary focus is on patients with congenital heart disease. Our primary client was Sreyashi Dey, the founder and current president of Sparshlife.
The Project
Sparshlife extends most of its mission and project information through its website, http://www.sparshlife.org/ . Since this is the one central place for visitors to gather information, it needed to be structured and updated. The current site was in need of a new information organization as well as a communication redesign.
The Solution
Our project was completed with a global team of two students from Carnegie Mellon University as well as two students from Singapore Management University. Together the team focused on redesigning the current website for Sparshlife by using a design theme that was simple, yet sophisticated. We worked together to gather requirements from our client and then divided to conquer different development tasks. By the conclusion of the project we were able to provide our client with a new information hierarchy presented in an updated design template for her organization.
View the site at www.sparshlife.org
AAA Foundation TrafficSTATS (Fall Semester, 2005)
The Students
Amarpal Banger, Glen Bischoff, Edward Mok, Kanishka Maheshwari
The Client
The American Automobile Association Foundation is dedicated to saving lives and reducing injuries on the roads. They are located in Washington, DC.
The Problem
Statistics are usually cited that make claims such as, "SUVs are more dangerous than passenger cars," yet solid statistical evidence is rarely given to back up such claims. There is no tool that would present the public with Risk Metrics that could back up these claims.
The Solution
The AAA Foundation wished to relate two independent data sources to give insight into statistics dealing with saving lives and reducing injuries on the roads. The first data source was The Fatality Analysis Reporting System or (FARS) which provides yearly data on every fatality that occurs in America. The second data source was The National Household Transportation Survey or (NHTS) which publishes the results of a periodic survey that captures the driving habits of the American public.
Our team, in conjunction with our faculty advisors, developed an interface for AAA that related these data sources using Business Intelligence technology from Microsoft. We developed an interface to interact with the Business Intelligence (Cube) technology in Microsoft SQL Server using the Reporting Services Suite. The development environment used was Microsoft Visual Studio, and a Travel Risk Evaluation and Decision Support Tool was developed.
The Travel Risk Evaluation and Decision Support Tool consists of a series of reports that allow the user to query the Risk Database (FARS/NHTS), the Fatalities Database (FARS) and the Travel Survey Data (NHTS). These tools allow users to view statistically relevant information at greatly improved query speeds compared to the original databases.
Professor Paul Fischbeck talks about TrafficSTATS on The Today Show
View the site at www.aaafoundation.org/trafficSTATS/
