Assistive Technology Project

In this project, we have developed tools tailored for students, particularly those with diverse learning needs. The primary objective was to simplify processes for them, enabling better organization and focus on their studies. This initiative wasn't just for students facing challenges but also aimed to enhance the experience for even organized individuals. I was involved in 3 projects: 1) Job coach Q&A 2) Email tone transfer 3) Planning assistant

The job coach Q&A is designed for students or new hires, especially on the autism spectrum. Drawing from the universal challenge of navigating a new workplace, our tool acts as an immediate personal assistant, easing the initial transition and during the work. This initiative builds upon DSSG 2022's foundation, harnessing the capabilities of GPT-4. Previously, the system necessitated users to upload documents, with the model anchored to AWS, resulting in an extensive infrastructure. Our renewed mission pivoted towards making the model more user-centric and developer-friendly by introducing predefined prompts. Furthermore, we acknowledged a lingering concern with the former model where it occasionally produced hallucinated answers. We identified common questions new hires might have and assessed GPT's answers for clarity and accuracy. This led to the creation of a "job coach" prompt, focusing on direct language for those on the autism spectrum. After testing, we streamlined responses, removing excess text. If uncertain, GPT now advises users to consult their supervisor.

In the E-mail Tone Transfer project, we ventured into addressing a challenge in professional communication. In today's professional landscape, many emails are peppered with excessive and unnecessary language, making them lengthy and hard to decipher. For individuals who are neurodivergent or non-native English speakers, understanding the core message of such emails can be particularly challenging. Recognizing this, our goal was to develop a solution that strips formal emails down to their essential points, presenting information clearly and directly. Additionally, we designed a complementary tool that crafts polished, professional emails from straightforward user inputs. Together, these tools aim to bridge the communication gap, ensuring that messages are both clear and professional. My specific role focused on the email summarization tool, which condenses verbose and ambiguous emails into succinct, everyday language, capturing only the crucial information.

In the Planning Assistant Project, we addressed a common yet intricate challenge faced by students in every academic semester. Imagine juggling multiple syllabi, each with different dates, assignments, readings, and exams. Our goal was to seamlessly organize and prioritize the information deluge by retrieving event details, such as assignments, readings, and exams from any format of the syllabi, and then creating calendar files with descriptions about due dates. My primary role was to extract the dates and events from using the vector store and tested the pipelines with the various samples of syllabi.