Members: Judy Ma, JoyoJeet Pal, Laheem Jordan
Advisor: AnnaLee Saxenian

Description

Development professionals are from a variety of academic disciplines including Economics, Environmental Planning, Social Policy, and a variety of Engineering fields. The interdisciplinary nature of this field makes research difficult, a fact further exacerbated by the separation of field practitioners from academic researchers. Although there are existing databases of information that are publicly accessible, they are optimized for internal usage by the development organizations that created them. More importantly, these products do not adequately allow users to add their input on the existing information. Thus, there is a critical gap between the tools available to users and the collaborative nature of effective development work. The Collaboration Repository is a system that combines the best features from existing development websites to create a user-inclusive product. The aim of our final project is to allow users to have a centralized location where they can share ideas and opinions on development projects and documents. It will be easy to use and support commenting, peer reviews, and discussions on projects and documents. These features and the ease of use of the system should encourage user participation and build a critical mass of site contributors and content.