Innovation and dedication? Check. Potential to make a difference? Check again. Yashasvi Nallamottu and Maliha Hashmi tapped into that and more with their creative projects at the annual Informatics Capstone Fair in a crowded President’s Hall at Franklin Hall.
The work of Nallamottu, a senior in Informatics with a cognate in business, along with her “Goodbye Food Waste” capstone teammates, and Hashmi, a second-year master’s student in Human-Computer Interaction Design, exemplified the transformative experience offered by the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering.
“During my time in Luddy,” Nallamottu said, “I have had many opportunities for professional and academic growth that I don’t think I could’ve gotten from another Informatics program.”
Hashmi credited the Luddy School for her personal and professional development. It honed her skills and expanded her vision.
“The program allowed me to grow a lot as a designer and an individual,” she said.
They were among the 167 undergraduate informatics students and 45 M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction Design students showing what they have learned and what they can do, both in conception and execution.
Forty-two informatics undergraduate team projects based on a broad theme of sustainability and 52 Human-Computer Interaction Design individual projects centered on meaningful human-centered design interventions were displayed at the April 18 event. Awards were given for Top Project, Teamwork Trophy, Dean’s Pitch and Students’ Choice.
All the undergraduate projects were web or application based. Each undergraduate project came from the two-semester capstone project class that asks informatics students to solve a problem for a local individual or organization, or find a broader solution for an issue involving the world at large.
“Getting to the project fair at the end of the year is an exciting moment,” said Logan Paul, faculty member in informatics. “We were excited to see the students’ final capstone projects, which all worked to solve an issue under our broad sustainability theme, ready to show off everybody. The work that teams put into each of the projects was evident.”
For the HCI Capstone Fair, students selected their projects based on their interests or something that was meaningful to them. They presented posters on their year-long capstone projects. That included app design, UX and UI, product design, AI interfaces, and more.
“The capstone projects from this year’s HCI/d students were exceptional,” said Kayce Reed-Buechlein, adjunct faculty lecturer. She taught the capstone project along with Michael Stallings, adjunct instructor, and Colin Gray, HCI/d program director and associate professor of Informatics.
“Students tackled a diverse array of challenges, including developing strategies for various audiences to manage and understand their social media consumption, frameworks for incorporating Virtual Reality into remote work, collaborative toolkits for product triads in Design, Product Management, and Engineering,” Reed-Buechlein said.
Instructors emphasized the importance of practicality and realistic projects, research-backed solutions, and driving high-quality outcomes for the intended user audiences.
“Students met these expectations with projects that were not only well-designed and professionally presented, but also made a meaningful impact in their respective spaces,” Reed-Buechlein said.
Hashmi’s project, “A Design Framework for Trust Building in Remote Teams using VR Games,” provides a framework to build trust and collaboration between remote and in-office workers. It uses icebreakers and collaborative games, based on trust formation theories of familiarity and effective communication, to build relationships in a fun, playful environment.
“When people work remotely,” Hashmi said, “they find it difficult to trust each other and work together because they’ve never met in person. It affects their collaboration. I designed a framework for them to leverage icebreakers in an intentional way using Virtual Reality.
“When you are transported into the world of virtual reality, you get immersed into that environment. You behave as a human. You are with the other person. It fosters trust and improves collaboration.”
Nallamottu and fellow senior Informatics majors Charity Holmes, Amanda Martinez and Nevaeh Williams collaborated on “Goodbye Food Waste,” a website that allows restaurant owners to take control of their food waste. Its purchasing and food usage tracking technology provides opportunities to reduce waste, save money and improve overall business efficiency and productivity.
“It required a lot of effort and collaboration,” Nallamottu said. “The fact that it came over the course of (the academic year) was very insightful. We got a good, accurate experience of what real-world project development looks like.”
Those wanting to improve their health could try “Gym Journey,” a gym app that helps beginners get into exercising. It received the Teamwork Trophy. Team members were senior Informatics majors Brayden Baker, Pengfei Zhang, Lillian Clarke and Abraham Stone.
“It allows users to generate a workout, find a gym, see workout videos, track their stats and improve their physical and mental health,” Baker said.
Zhang said the app is great for people who don’t know how to get started in an exercise program.
“It makes their life easier,” he said. “They can search for gym information, childcare, length of exercise and more.”
For those seeking social media usage balance, M.S. HCI/d Mayuka Ashwin Lokre has you covered with “Unreel: Mitigation Strategies to Combat Doomscrolling on Instagram Reels.”
As Lokre said on Linkedin, for those who get lost in endless scrolling on (Instagram) Reels – “Been there, scrolled that!”
“When I was trying to pick a capstone topic, I found myself stuck in a loop of scrolling through Instagram instead. It hit me that I needed to address this. I decided to focus my capstone on finding ways to avoid getting caught up in endless scrolling. If I’m feeling this, I bet others are, too.”
Then there was Hierolingo, a website that allows users to learn about Egyptian hieroglyphs, specifically their sound and meaning. Team members were Informatics seniors Luke Harris, Max Arnold and Aiden Smith, and senior linguistics major Jeff Hochgesang.
Harris said he’s always been fascinated with Egyptian culture, but there wasn’t an online resource available on how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. The team began building the website in December and got the bulk of it done by February.
“This teaches how to read hieroglyphs,” Harris said. “There also are pronunciation files so you can hear how it sounds. You can learn the actual language.”
Arnold said building the lessons was easy, “but we struggled with the design. That took most of the time.”
Business startups took center stage with “SYNERGY -- Reimaging Project Kickoff in Startup Teams.” An HCI project by Aniket Dwivedi, an HCI/d master’s student, it offers a framework designed for kickoff workshops in startup companies. It’s aimed at enabling team leaders to facilitate and encourage active participation from all team members by fostering mutual alignment, enhancing working relationships and clarifying the project vision.
Another HCI project was “Eureka -- a toolkit designed to assist student designers during ideation sessions.” Nikith Dsouza, also a master’s student in HCI/d, said his project generates ideas through a combination of design patterns, wild cards and constraints to inspire creativity, navigate ambiguity and foster collaboration within groups.
“The goal is to cultivate a creative mindset and accelerate the idea generation process,” he said.
Here are the other award winners:
Hoosier Research Connect for Top Project. Team members: B.S. Informatics Ritwik Gupta, B.S. Informatics Hyunju Song and B.S. Informatics Julia Macias.
GreenGrocer for Dean’s Pitch. Team members: B.S. Informatics Kris Otten, B.S. Informatics Daesu Kim and B.S. Informatics Minyoung Kim.
Everewear for Students’ Choice. Team members: B.S. Informatics Megan Zakrowski, B.S. Informatics Samantha Wilson, B.S. Informatics Lexi Keller and B.S. Informatics John Stroke.
The fair’s ultimate goal is to help prepare students for future success. Nallamottu said she has an internship lined up in network security, will get certified in Amazon Web Services and earn a master’s degree in information systems before beginning her career.
“I’d like to do cloud and network security, and eventually go into cloud engineering and IT architecture,” she said.