Abstract
Sociotechnical Synthesis
Introduction:
My technical and STS projects are not about the same industry, but they are connected by a common concern: how digital platforms are designed to reduce uncertainty and shape user behavior. My technical project, Agora, addresses a campus-specific problem of short-term ownership by building a peer-to-peer rental platform for UVA students that makes borrowing and lending feel more trustworthy, structured, and usable than existing alternatives such as open marketplaces or informal group chats. My STS project examines a different domain, e-commerce, and asks what the growing use of 3D visualization reveals about the broader sociotechnical imaginary shaping digital retail. Working on both projects at the same time showed me that interface design is never just a technical matter. In both cases, the platform does not only display information. The platform actively structures how users evaluate risk, how much friction they encounter, and what kinds of transactions they come to see as normal or desirable. Agora made me think concretely about trust, coordination, and institutional accountability, while the STS project helped me interpret those same design choices as expressions of larger assumptions about what a “good” digital transaction should feel like.
Summary of Technical Capstone Project:
My capstone project is Agora, a campus-restricted peer-to-peer rental platform designed for University of Virginia students. The project begins from the problem of short-term ownership: students often need items only briefly, yet existing channels for obtaining them are inefficient, unstructured, or untrustworthy. Agora responds to that gap by offering a rental-first web platform with features specifically designed for short-term access rather than permanent sale. These include verified @virginia.edu authentication, listing creation with required photos and condition tags, search and browsing by category and availability, a date-bounded rental request workflow, in-app messaging, post-transaction reviews, and reporting tools. Technically, the platform was implemented as a full-stack Next.js application with React on the front end, API routes on the back end, MongoDB for persistent data, DigitalOcean Spaces for listing photos, and a GitHub Actions pipeline for linting, type checking, builds, and Playwright end-to-end tests. The project was evaluated through automated testing, usability testing with 23 UVA students, survey responses, and open-ended qualitative feedback. Results suggested that a purpose-built, institutionally bounded rental interface could reduce transaction friction and increase perceived trust relative to open marketplaces and ad hoc group chats, while also surfacing limitations around payment integration, dispute resolution, and equitable participation that point to future work.
Summary of STS Research Paper:
My STS research paper, “Rendering Certainty: 3D Visualization and Sociotechnical Imaginaries in E-Commerce,” examines how variations in 3D visualization across retail categories reveal a broader sociotechnical imaginary shaping digital retail. The paper argues that tools such as 3D viewers, room-planners, virtual try-on systems, and product configurators are not simply better product images. Instead, they are material expressions of a future in which online shopping is expected to be certainty-producing, frictionless, and customizable. To make this argument, the paper compares how different categories deploy 3D in response to different shopping uncertainties. For example, furniture retail often centers on spatial fit, which is why systems such as IKEA Kreativ emphasize room scanning, placement, and visualization within a user’s own home. Apparel and lifestyle retail more often center identity, style, and self-expression, which is why tools such as Nike By You foreground customization and personal expression. Automotive configurators push customization even further by allowing users to assemble a version of a product while also generating preference data from those choices. Using the STS concept of sociotechnical imaginaries, originally developed by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim to explain publicly performed visions of desirable futures, the paper shows that 3D retail systems do not merely respond to consumer needs. They also help produce and stabilize new expectations about what shopping should feel like. In that sense, the paper treats 3D e-commerce as a social and cultural project as much as a technical one.
Concluding Reflection:
The value of completing both projects simultaneously is that each one made the other more legible. Building Agora pushed me to think in concrete engineering terms about trust, friction, accountability, and user motivation. I had to decide what kinds of information users needed before taking action, how much structure to impose on an exchange, and what mechanisms could make strangers within a shared institution feel safe enough to participate. Those technical questions closely parallel the themes in my STS paper, where digital retail systems are also designed to reduce uncertainty and guide users toward action. Working on Agora therefore gave me a grounded way to think about how platforms operationalize confidence, not as an abstract concept, but as something produced through specific features such as verification, ratings, required photos, and clear workflows. At the same time, my STS research changed how I understood the technical project. It pushed me to see that Agora’s interface was expressing a normative vision of campus exchange: one in which access can be easier than ownership, trust can be partially built through institutional identity and accountability, and waste can be reduced through better coordination. That perspective helped me see that even a relatively small student platform carries assumptions about what kinds of relationships and behaviors technology should support. If I had completed these projects separately, I would have understood Agora mainly as a software artifact and the STS paper mainly as an interpretive argument. Doing them together made both projects stronger. The technical project showed me how social values get embedded into system design, while the STS project gave me a language for explaining why those design choices matter. Taken together, they left me with a more critical understanding of engineering practice, one in which building better systems means not only making them functional and efficient, but also thinking carefully about the kinds of social worlds they help create.
