Product Discovery in Artisanal Retail; Analysis of the Role of Technology in the Transformation of Artisanal Retail

The technical project focused on a software platform for facilitating product discovery in the retail space. For Capstone, my group proposed a new tool, Curate, to help small businesses which have been significantly impacted by the pandemic. The proposed tool is a software as a service provided to small businesses to connect these businesses with artisans as a source of product discovery. Artisans would be able to sign up for the service with their products. Curate would form personalized curated collections for small businesses to buy and sell. The STS Thesis serves as a social study for this proposed tool, Curate. This project analyzes the current state of business operations for both small brick and mortar businesses and creators. Current trends in the artisanal retail industry are established using survey and interview data. Furthermore, the project analyses the potential for technology to transform the small business industry based on innovations from larger retailers and another research.

School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Technical Advisor: Kevin Sullivan and Kevin Skadron
STS Advisor: Tsai-Hsuan Ku
Technical Team Members: Shubhi Maheshwari, Stephen Palathingal