Capstone Projects | Information Science | University of Colorado Boulder

Spring 2022

	At CU Boulder, there is an acknowledged party culture that involves heavy alcohol consumption to the point of binge drinking normalization. For our capstone project, our goal was to create a way to help CU students who want to cut back on their drinking using technology to help shift behavioral issues. While there are apps that exist for cutting back on drinking or making healthy choices, they are not specific for students. We took inspiration from these existing platforms and curated it to the Boulder campus. We created AlcoHalt to help buffs in need of gentle support and motivation to drink less. The AlcoHalt app contains features like activity suggestions, sobriety tracker, and bank account tracking. All of these features were chosen to help students overcome their drinking problems in Boulder and are specific to student needs. For example, the activity suggestions involve venues and events in the Boulder area for college-aged people. Over three design iterations, we have edited the prototype based on student feedback. We have learned a lot about how humans use technology and what they are looking for in their apps from this design process.
	Yik Yak is an anonymous app where users can make posts (‘yaks’) that are only viewable within a 5 mile radius. Through different methods, this study focuses on the ways Yik Yak users interact with the platform in the CU Boulder community. We used three methods to analyze the perceptions and experiences of Yik Yak users. The methods were in depth interviews, surveys, and manual data collection of Yaks (N=574 Yaks). The collected yaks were then coded into 47 categories with 90.5% reliability.
	Brands and corporations have not shied away from taking political stances in recent years (Hydock et al., 2019) Americans are recognizing and resonating with the messages of these brands which causes changes that start to align with political thinking. Applying logistic regression and random forest machine learning models on data from Google Trends and Simmons, we have predicted the political alignment of continental U.S. states from 2016-2022. Illuminating further the connections between brands and election behavior phenomena for future discussion in the American political diaspora.
	Notice is an AI-powered platform that provides content creators with actionable insights to better understand their audiences' desires and to build a more loyal viewership. Qualitative data has been overlooked by third-party platforms, and in turn, creators miss out on inspiration from the very people they sent out to entertain. Notice provides insights using language analysis to ensure better organization and understanding for any creator on YouTube. Notice processes all comments that focus on sentiment to gather next-level insights on an audience in a simple dashboard. Notice will sort comments from a comment section into “smart-buckets.” These will organize a creator’s comments by “Positive,” “Negative,” and “Wishes.”
	This project took a subreddit called r/BlackPeopleTwitter as a case study to study users Sense of Virtual Community(SOVC) through analyzing user’s observational tracking data in data science methods. I developed several metrics that may be able to be used to measure and operationalize one of the SOVC constructs called Interactivity (INT) and then did correlation analysis with users’ self-reported ratings about INT to determine the usability of these metrics. In the end, two of these metrics were found to have a strong correlation with user perceptions about INT, and one of these has a relatively weak correlation. By developing such metrics, we could help researchers, developers, or other stakeholders to have a more specific methodological guidance for defining community constructs that better match the community experience of users.
	Given the steep rise in tuition over the last 15 years, prospective students, current students, families, and university faculty are interested in how this money is used within the University of Colorado system. Because the university is a state entity, its financial data is available online; however, the information is not readily available, as it is housed deep within its website. Through semi-structured interviews and the analysis of the aforementioned financial documents, we examine and present a prototype of additions to the existing online student portal and a new tuition dashboard webpage to increase financial transparency around the university's budget. With the portal, students and parents will access their tuition bills more easily than before. At the same time, the tuition dashboard allows users to see long-term breakdowns of tuition-related trends and filter by college, year, and residency status to see a detailed analysis of what students' tuition funded during that fiscal year.
	The goal of our project Better Bets was to provide statistical and analytical insights regarding the Las Vegas Over/Under line, specifically on NFL games.

Spring 2021

	An exploratory investigation of what blockchain technology is, how it works, and how it can be applied to authentication as a use case.
	Friendly Fire is a social cataloging platform with the goal of helping people discover and share video games via a community of gamers.
	Galavant is your one-stop-shop for planning your perfect trip, suggesting the most highly-reviewed tourist stops.
	A social media app revolving around sports betting, designed to encourage responsible use.
	An application that allows users to take pictures of skin conditions on their cellphones and track them over time with the ability to connect their account with their dermatologist for remote tracking.
	A planning and analysis service where registered users can upload and share guides related to achieving goals.
Misinformationists	A research paper regarding misinformation on Twitter surrounding Colorado representative’s verified accounts.
Spotify Usage during the COVID-19 Pandemic	Assessing the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on overall listening habits and usage within the Spotify app, utilizing the Spotify API.

Spring 2020

	Ensors: Eco Kitchen Priyanka Panati, Lanea Blackburn, Sofia Rubio, Joy Weinberg Our goal is to create an environmentally friendly and more sustainable home through a ubiquitous computing lens. We show the process of data flow through the use of sensors and arduino microcontrollers which will track water usage, garbage and recycling weight, and temperatures of the oven and fridge/freezer unit. We printed 3-D components of the kitchen to give people a full understanding of how the sensors would work and where they would be placed. We created an app mockup where someone can see, track, and use the data that has been collected. Our goal is to make people more aware of their consumption habits.
	FOODIE Spencer Faribairn, Malik Tefridj, Steven Yatko While there may be tons of sites and places to get food recommendations, we wanted to help that indecision by giving the user more tools to search for food(i.e., budget, allergies, and specials). With these special accomidities, we are trying to be inclusive to a group of people that might not have a large voice on sites like Yelp. The overall reviews sometimes don’t paint the picture of the quality of the food. By having separate meal reviews, we are more inclusive to those who frequent takeout more. Also, restaurants aren’t always clear about the ingredients they use which could become risk factors for those who have food allergies. Finally, we wanted to make a clear budget guide for the restaurants. While some sites already offer this feature, we wanted to make clear the lowest to highest price since it is not obvious for some places. We hope to make the decision to find food easier!
	Flight on Time Anthony Camacci, Ryan Clune, Marissa Kelley, Kexin Zhai Have you ever gotten to the airport too early and had to wait for an extensive amount of time? Or too late and had to run to your gate? For many people, traveling can be stressful. The day involves a lot of time management, planning, and making sure you get to your gate on time. Our goal was to create a mock prototype of an app that people could use to better determine when to leave to get to the airport. Flight on Time allows its users to factor in many different parts of their travel experience such as whether or not they’re checking bags or if they’re traveling with other guests or pets. We hope that this app makes the traveling experience less stressful for all travelers.
	NeverLate Yizhen Wu, Kathleen Anderson, Jihoon Jang Are you someone who presses the snooze button constantly, and then regrettingly gets to work late? Or are you someone who anxiously wakes up right after the first alarm beep, to then regrettingly get somewhere too early with nothing to do? We wanted to solve this issue through creating a prototype that will maximize the sleeping potential while also making sure that the users are responsible for their daily obligations, such as timely getting to their destination.
	Fireflies in the Dark Talia Colalancia, Jason Bliss-Harvest Kibozi-Yocka, Skyler Middler There are a number of factors that contribute to poor mental health in college students. Among these, some of the more prominent issues include things like exam pressures and other school-related stresses, social media and issues around identity and acceptance, feelings of loneliness and feelings of isolation, and fear of the future (Philip et. al. 2005). Known methods for promoting positive mental health, particularly in schools, include: encouraging social time, creating safe spaces for students to be vulnerable and get support, destigmatizing mental health and making mental health know, and providing wellness activities for students to participate in -- including sports and other activities that boost endorphins (basically activities that are fun), teamwork and connection-building opportunities, opportunities to give back and help others, and mindfulness sessions (Shoshani et. al. 2014; Weare 2015). Our hope with this study is to leverage the framework of DnD by integrating these known methods for promoting mental health into the game itself, as a means for promoting positive mental health among college students, focusing particularly on the social side of mental health (social health).
	Fantalytics Jack Sandberg, Willy Tardif, Hannah Weber, Ryan Tate Every year in North America around 59.3 million people play Fantasy sports, and the average person spends about $556 on dues and bets. With many sites offering tools for Fantasy betting predictions, none specifically focus on sport injuries. Our goal was to use data analytics to predict NBA Fantasy points for players when they return to the court following an injury. Using injury and box score player data from 2010-2019, we created a prediction model to predict a player’s Fantasy points for a specified number of games following their return from injury. We conducted two rounds of interviews with four people who play Fantasy sports to learn more about how and if they would use a function to predict scores.