Nick Orton's IT Blog

It's been quite the endeavor finishing this project. The 10,000 word report, dashboard, user manual, and presentation took a lot of effort to put together, but it was well worth it in the end. Our professor complimented our work, stating we were one of the top performers of the class resulting in an A in the class. It was unfortunate, however, that none of the Microsoft representatives were able to attend our presentation, much to the disappointment and apologies of our professor. Despite this, the class overall was a fantastic learning experience, requiring the 7 of us to collaborate heavily throughout the semester. In this post, I'll leave the links to the final versions of our submissions. Specific details on the project can be found in my previous posts, but I'll provide a short summary here for convenience. Our group of 7 students were required to pick an industry and pitch an AR solution for that industry. This included a 10,000 word report, an interactive dashboa...

The project has certainly come a long way from the beginning of the semester. For some additional background information, we've chosen Volkswagen as our hypothetical sponsor, and plan on implementing AR technology with various dealerships that offer repair/maintenance services with the Microsoft HoloLens. The goal is to increase customer satisfaction and trust with Volkswagen by providing a more transparent and efficient maintenance and repair service by utilizing AR technology. We've hammered out a lot of the details, and are currently putting together the 10,000 word proposal as well as the dashboard. The dashboard itself shows the financial impact our AR implementation will have, and will require a SQL connection of some sort for the final submission. Posted here will be the rough draft, which involves predicted revenue and market share increases should our AR implementation be accepted. We are still working on the SQL connection, and availability online through Tableau on...

In my Spring 2018 semester (the current one as of this post), I will be taking the Information Systems Capstone, which acts as a replacement for my internship requirement to graduate. This means the class will involve a full-semester-long project that replicates something we would do in the working world. As a group, we must propose to a Fortune 500 company why they should invest in Augmented Reality to help them save or earn more money. This involves a 10,000 word report detailing the opportunity, an explanation of the proposed solution, technical architecture, financial justification, and the implementation plan, an interactive dashboard that assists our argument to implement AR, and a manual detailing dashboard use, underlying financial analysis, and technical infrastructure. The project overall is quite the undertaking, requiring us to form a Sprint Workplan to stay on track during the semester, as well as weekly status reports with the professor. Everything is on us to researc...

During my Fall 2017 semester, I took Information Security. The final project for this class involved contacting a local business and conducting a free IT Security Risk Assessment. Once chosen, the group meets with the selected business to ask a bunch of security questions to perform a risk assessment. The answers are then analyzed by the group, and feedback is given to the business on what kind of risks are apparent in their security. My group's business of choice was Sora Medical Clinic, a small walk-in clinic. They operate by accepting clients without requiring insurance, but fees and such are paid by the client. Upon scheduling a meeting, we came up with a list of questions based on our lectures from the class. Linked here is the very list (with answers omitted for privacy reasons): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J941GwBvj8M-jcaAfCAjlWFyF6DghXJ-/view?usp=sharing To my group's surprise, the clinic was VERY secure, and had a ready answer to nearly every question. This...

In my Fall 2017 semester, I took Data Visualization. For the final group project in that class, we were tasked with selecting a location in the United States that tech companies are looking to locate to. From there, our group would find data sets to create an argument for why a company should move there. After presenting to the professor, three groups from all the sections were selected to participate in the competition. One additional group outside the class would also be selected to participate. The top three placements receive a cash prize: 1st gets $3000, 2nd gets $1500, and 3rd gets $500 (awarded to the group, so split among the group members). The judge and sponsor was a representative from Power BI! Our group chose Atlanta, Georgia as our location. Much to the professor's dismay, no one picked Dallas, Texas as everyone thought it would be too obvious of a choice with lots of groups picking it. For our data, we chose airport traffic, cost of living with median rent and ho...

Hello there! My name is Nicholas Orton (also known as Nick), and this is my ITSS blog detailing some experiences and stuff I've worked on during my time at UTD! I'm currently pursuing my bachelor's degree in ITSS, and plan on graduating in the Spring of 2018 (this semester)! Hopefully this will give some insight on some of the work and such I've done that can't be properly conveyed in a resume. This will likely include school projects and anything else that deserves mentioning. I'll do my best to include details such as dates, but I may leave out names for privacy reasons. This blog will also be used for my Web Analytics class, which will mean certain website usage data will be recorded to see and analyze traffic data to this blog. This data will be used for class assignments and projects. Thanks for reading!