Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Department of Information Systems
Description
The fashion industry demonstrates itself to be highly competitive and aggressive, making it difficult for fashion graduates to find work in the industry. Another customer problem is that fashion products do not ideally meet customers' expectations, whether it is through fit, design, etc. These two problems relate to the inefficiencies in the ideation and distribution channels of fashion. There is a lack of another outlet for fashion where products are different from what retail offers and fashion ideas can be shared. The two problems stated previously are byproducts of this. This research study and entrepreneurial effort of building a web platform will allow consumers, designers, manufacturers, and retailers (these target groups are also known as "customer segments" throughout the project) to work together to create a clothing product that not only fits the customer's vision, but also provides the ability for designers and small businesses to better establish themselves in the industry. The website was designed based on potential customers' inputs collected from a marketing survey, a competitive analysis, and the business model canvas. The website was developed following the systems development life cycle (SDLC) project management method. This was followed in order to make sure the website will be available on time, with all the required features, and within the budget. According to the survey analysis, most people do not make an effort to produce a unique design if a fashion product does not meet their standards. Instead, they will settle for an item similar to what was in mind and that already exists in-stores or online. However, further data analysis showed that this difference was apparent between men and women. Thus, the research finding was that the website would be targeting a niche market of college-aged women during the first launch. In order to reach the small target segment, different digital marketing approaches must be used to attract new users. To attract college-aged female consumers, the site must discover and sponsor "influencers" to authentically promote the website towards prospective consumers. To attract designers, word of mouth is best utilized: reaching out to design majors at Arizona State University, then other local schools, and expanding from there. To attract local manufacturers and retailers, a typical direct sales strategy is necessary by informing these businesses about the team and background, so that they feel confident in the partnership. The overall hypothesis of this project: the creation of a web platform that provides a network among consumers, designers, and local businesses will create jobs for designers, cause local businesses to build recognition, and allow consumers to create their own fashion product without design experience. This site is named My Clothing Line to make it feel as though each of the individual customers are logging into their own business site.
ContributorsTran, Melissa Kim (Author) / Lin, Elva (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
With the world fundamentally changing as a result of the new computer technologies that have become increasingly more prevalent in day-to-day life, public education systems must adapt to equip students with the skills and knowledge they will need to function in the future. The crossOver curriculum, presented to a local group of Tempe high school students, provides informative, accessible technology education lessons aimed at inspiring students, grades 9-12, to pursue computer knowledge, such as web development and mobile app design, independently in hopes that they might choose technology as a career path later in their educations. I designed this curriculum to be engaging by constantly incorporating hands-on activities where students were able to build and execute code based on concepts they learned during our weekly sessions. Each unit in the crossOver curriculum has accompanying resources that are comprehensive, requiring little to no background knowledge in the subjects they cover. Recognizing that many schools, especially ones in lower income areas, may not have the resources to provide effective technology education, I spent considerable effort providing instructional tools meant for educators to utilize. These resources will be made available for others to use in the future. I faced many early challenges in the learning process of developing lessons that were interesting to the group of approximately fifteen high schoolers attending regularly; nevertheless, the overall outcome was successful. This conclusion is based on the students’ feedback and the quality of work they were eventually able to produce using the programming tools covered in the crossOver curriculum.
ContributorsJensen, Connor Yasir (Author) / Lin, Elva (Thesis director) / White, Mary (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
In this research paper I explore former male athletes, specifically professional football players entering local journalism. Research paired with interviews in regards to the topic explain why there are nearly 10 former NFL players in local markets where an NFL team is present, and why local journalists along with future journalists should not be worried about the number of former male athletes in local journalism. The paper also dives into the side-by-side statistics of why there is significantly more former college athletes in local journalism than former NFL players. The research focused on more than 100 television stations, revealing that 100 former or current collegiate or pro athletes are journalists for local stations where an NFL team is present. The data is solely reliant on the information that the journalists provided in their bios on the station websites. This could be seen as a possible limitation, however, the likelihood of these journalists either lying or not identifying as a former athlete is minimal due to the size of the accomplishment of actually participating in college as an athlete. The basis of my research is to figure out if former NFL players and former athletes in general are taking journalism jobs from aspiring journalists. I conclude that future journalists are not at risk of losing jobs when it comes to retired football players entering the field of local journalism. With that said, aspiring journalists need to continue to develop their social media skills to compete with athletes’ audiences on social networks.
ContributorsTotri, Anthony Matthew (Author) / Kurland, Brett (Thesis director) / Reed, Sada (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor, Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
How prepared are individuals to work in an environment with sensitive information? Do business students believe a data security course would be a valuable addition to their curriculum? This study investigates W.P. Carey's role in preparing its students for jobs in which they most likely will have to handle large amounts of important data. Roughly 500 students across varying majors and years of education in the W.P. Carey School of Business answered an assortment of questions on their computer habits, and responded to various scenarios to test their knowledge. The survey targeted three specific areas (Software Updates, Password Protection, and Phishing) which was believed to be most pertinent to the students' future roles as professionals. While a large number of those surveyed (roughly 65%) responded well to most questions, nearly a third of all the responses received indicated cause for concern or an indication of a lack of knowledge. It was suggested (and many respondents agreed) that further education be provided to students for their own well-being in addition to the wellbeing of their future employers.
ContributorsVaughan, Nathaniel D (Author) / Lin, Elva (Thesis director) / Doupé, Adam (Committee member) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The purpose of this thesis was to develop a tool to provide information and data for design teams to use throughout the mobile application design process. Ideally, this would enable teams to see patterns in iterative design, and ultimately use data-driven analysis to make their own decisions. The initial problem was a lack of available information offered by mobile application design teams—the initial goal being to work closely with design teams to learn their decision-making methodology. However, every team that was reached out to responded with rejection, presenting a new problem: a lack of access to quality information regarding the decision-making process for mobile applications. This problem was addressed by the development of an ethical hacking script that retrieves reviews in bulk from the Google Play Store using Python. The project was a success—by feeding an application’s unique Play Store ID, the script retrieves a user-specified amount of reviews (up to millions) for that mobile application and the 4 “recommended” applications from the Play Store. Ultimately, this thesis proved that protected reviews on the Play Store can be ethically retrieved and used for data-driven decision making and identifying patterns in an application’s iterative design. This script provides an automated tool for teams to “put a finger on the pulse” of their target applications.
ContributorsDyer, Mitchell Patrick (Author) / Lin, Elva (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
This paper about the Garden Grub concerns the growing Agritech industry along with exposing middle school students to STEM education. Currently over half of America's students are not prepared to be successful in our technology driven world. These students did not have the opportunity to be exposed to many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math related careers or majors before entering the working world and/or college. These students are unaware of the real-life applications these topics can have and will never have the chance to pursue these fields. Using the Garden Grub, students will be introduced to the world of Agritech and how traditional agriculture is changing in include more technology. The Garden Grub is designed to not only introduce students to STEM in general, but specifically the Agritech Industry. With the Garden Grub kit and instructions students will be able to construct a small device that will monitor the external temperature and the soil moisture of a plant they are growing. For future implementations of the Garden Grub, we will develop a structured lesson plan to teach the users more about the device they are building. This is so in the future users could continue their education in Agritech and STEM because they have more knowledge on the subjects From standalone testing the Garden Grub, the device was able to successfully monitor the lettuce to ensure that it grew successfully. The Garden Grub instructions and kit were tested in a fourth-grade classroom, where college volunteers worked with the students to begin to create their own device. While there was not enough time to successfully complete the product the fourth graders were more interested in STEM than when we first started. Even though they struggled in the beginning, students quickly learned basic concepts , such as +/- circuit power, transfer of data, and sensor connections. More recently we were able to go into a middle school and teach in a classroom with the students who were part of a coding elective course. Since our last outing we were able to update the user manual and prepare more ahead of time. This gave us more time to explain the concepts to the students, along with being able to successful build all of the devices. They began to think of ways that this device could be applicable to their lives along with how the Garden Grub could be improved in the future.
ContributorsWynia, Rachel Marie (Author) / Lin, Elva (Thesis director) / Eakin, Hallie (Committee member) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05