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 Professor Randy Weinberg, (412) 268-3228, or rweinberg@cmu.edu.
This is a small sample of the projects IS students have completed recently.
Global Footprint Network (Fall Semester, 2011)
The Students
Varun Arora, Rohit Bothra, Patrick Dunn, Nicole Ifill, Rana Khalil
The Client
David Moore, Senior Project Manager, Global Footprint
Network
The Problem
The Global Footprint Network produces a large amount of data
on the global footprint of several countries around the world, highlighting not
only large overview facts like the country's biocapacity reserves and
consumption, but also bringing to light the sources of the demand and
consumption. All this data is very complicated to understand and interpret for
local change-makers and citizen activists, which leads to lack of urgency in
action to some of the most pressing environment challenges on the part of the
general public. Also, all this data is stored in MS Excel files and distributed
inefficiently using file attachments.
The Solution
The team built a front-end
application and data service solution called GFNInSight. GFNInSight models the
GFN's MS Excel data into scalable and web-service friendly databases stored in
the cloud, and uses this data in a sample Flash application that creates
sensible visualizations on the National Footprint Account, Ecological
Footprint, Final Demand, Consumption and Trade data. It does so by creating
"profiles" of individual countries, which highlight the critical information
from all of the data in the database relevant to the country. There is also a
partially-built Ruby on Rails application that serves as an administration
interface in the background for the staff of GFN to manipulate the data records
manually, thus providing possibilities for moving all the data management
functions to a web-based environment in the future.
Northern Area Companies (Fall Semester, 2011)
The Students
Andrew Caniglia, Ashley Jiang, Chloe Koo, Chris Lebowitz, Jason Yung
The Client
The Northern Area Companies, a non-profit organization
that provides a variety of needed programs and services to thousands of people
each year. Specifically, we worked with the Personal Care Homes division which
is a group of retirement homes.
The Problem
The Personal Care Homes division currently
records all of their medical information for their residents on three separate
paper forms, the Preadmission Screening, Documentation of Medical Evaluation
and Resident Assessment and Support Plan. Each resident can have multiple forms
for each type which makes it incredibly difficult to keep track of each
resident's forms. Also, whenever filling out a new form, all of the residents
information needs to be filled out again even if it has not changed.
The Solution
The team designed and built WebPCH, an online
application built with Ruby on Rails. With WebPCH, users are able to view and
edit resident's information quickly and easily. We created a simple interface
for each of the forms where users can answer the questions on each form. This
information is stored in a database so that a user can easily modify an
existing form. The application also has a reminder system in place that tells a
user when a form needs to be filled out for a specific resident. Users are also
able to view and print the previous forms filled out for the resident.
United Way (Fall Semester, 2010)
The Students
Jinho Baek, Chang Ryu, Andy Kim, David Yi
The Client
Founded in
1908, United Way
of Allegheny County
is a non-profit organization whose primary function is to create efficient
fundraising in the Pittsburgh
community. United Way of Allegheny County works to address critical community
needs among youth, elders, and families to create long-lasting impact in the
greater Pittsburgh
area. United Way continuously strives to better allocate funding resources to
areas most needed within their community.
The Problem
Nationally,
there has been increasing pressure by funders of afterschool organizations to
develop centralized data collection systems for the organizations they are
financing. United Way of Allegheny County currently faces the challenge of
implementing such a system in Pittsburgh.
A centralized information system would be the first step towards improving the
quality of youth programming offered in the city, and would aid as an
invaluable tool for afterschool organizations by better enabling the
presentation of organization data to funders and administration. There are more
than 1300 afterschool organizations in Allegheny County
all collecting different sets of data, through various means and methods, which
has presented a challenging task to create a best-fit centralized data
collection system. The lack of a unified data collection system has made it
difficult for United Way
of Allegheny County to efficiently distribute funds
to afterschool organizations.
The Solution
The team
first identified standard data collection system needs given Allegheny County's
unique situation. Then, the team devised a model system, based on these needs,
to serve as a rubric for all vendor product candidates. Afterward, the team
tested this model system against a certified set of vendor products. Finally,
the team narrowed the recommendation to a select few vendors.
Kenya Sustainability (Fall Semester, 2010)
The Students
Jarrett Adams, Courtney Harano, Meg Hayes, Danelson Rosa, Travis Wolfe
The Client
Dr. Ravi Sharma, PhD,
Associate Director of Public Health Informatics/Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh
The Problem
Kenya is a country that wants to accelerate its
growth in the next 20 years. To do this they have planned a set of policies
that they want to implement (outlined in their Kenya Vision 2030), but the
effect that these policies will have on their population and natural resources
is not well understood. Dr. Sharma's goal is to research the possible effects
of the Kenya Vision 2030 and influence policy makers in Kenya to make
decisions that will improve long-term sustainability.
The Solution
We created a system dynamics
model to help understand the interdependencies between Kenya's growing
economy and existing natural resources. We tested hypotheses about the
relationships between different factors in Kenya in order to build a robust
and coherent model. We also tested some of the effects of the policy changes
outlined in Kenya's
Vision 2030. Our final product consists
of two pieces: the system dynamics model demonstrating the relationships
between several key factors and a detailed analysis of the model including
historical consumption trends, complete descriptions of each of its components,
and the result of tests based on the Kenya Vision 2030. This report could be distributed to a wide
audience including Kenyan policy makers, academics interested in the Kenya
Vision 2030 or the field of system dynamics modeling, and grant foundations who
would pursue further research opportunities.
Best of the Batch Foundation (Fall Semester, 2009)
The Students
Meredith Huffsmith, Amritha Prasad, Tom Flavin, Phil Pantalone
The Client
The Best of the Batch Foundation is an organization founded by Charlie Batch of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Foundation was created to help underprivileged children by offering after school sports and activities. The Foundation hosts an annual event called In The Pocket which allows people to donate money in order to play against Pittsburgh Steelers in games of pool, ping-pong, and poker. Our client was Latasha Wilson, the Executive Director of the Best of the Batch Foundation.
The Problem
The Best of the Batch Foundation must schedule the event and keep track of who atttends and plays in a strict three hour time span. As people pre-register they would be entered into a queue for each individual game table so that the players would know when their turn came up. During the course of the event, some tables would become backed up and other players would need to be moved from table to table in order to accommodate all games before the evening concludes.
The Solution
Our team created a system that would alleviate these stressful tasks by registering all players and putting them into one single queue for each game rather than table. Once a free table opened up, the system would simply “pop” the top person from the queue and then place them in the game. We also created a scoreboard that displayed all of the queues and the latest highlights that were going on at different tables.
iPracticeChinese (Fall Semester, 2009)
The Students
Jungmin Lee, Neo Zhe Han, David E. Chen, Yvonne Yu
The Client
Professor Sue-Mei Wu, Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon
The Problem
Learning Chinese is often overwhelming, especially reading and writing. Dr. Sue-Mei Wu, author of widely used Chinese textbooks, has developed a set of 1200 character animations that ease the learning of reading and writing Chinese characters.
The Solution
The team designed a built iPracticeChinese.com, a Chinese character acquisition website where Chinese characters and other lesson materials combine to promote and accelerate Chinese learning. iPracticeChinese.com allows users to read articles about Chinese language, to watch character animation demonstrations, to take quizzes and to search for characters within lesson sets.
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.
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
