The Teaching & Research Application Development (TRAD) service partners with instructors, researchers and campus staff to conceptualize, design and implement innovative custom software solutions and library applications. We specialize in supporting campus teaching, learning and research ideas.

Our team provides the technical expertise to:

Build solutions for research data collection, aggregation and sharing
Design and develop proof of concept prototypes and fully developed applications in support of teaching and research innovations
Create pedagogically sound games, simulations and data visualizations
Design and develop custom websites
Work with evaluators to identify and collect complex learning analytics
Integrate new tools into or adapt current tools within the campus’ digital ecosystem
Create, integrate and support tools and applications in use at campus and UW System libraries

Agefully

Symptom Clusters

Vector Records Repository

Wisconsin Central Sands Precipitation Tool

Johne’s Information Center Website

Hamel Music Center Website

School of Human Ecology Website

Soybean Research Database

Student Grouping Tool

Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention Games and Quitting App

Nanodatabase

Market Indicators for Impact App

ACTIV

Brain Atlas App

Dairyland Initiative Website

Clean Boats Clean Waters App

Water Vapor Data Visualization App

UW Wisconsin App

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Agefully
Agefully is an evidence-based web application that connects family caregivers of older adults to research and expertise that helps them anticipate needs, explore options, prepare for likely future decisions, and improve the quality of life of older adults.

Campus Partner

Center for Aging Research and Education

Tech Highlights
- Custom-built content management system to manage site content
- App modifies content for the user to create a more personalized experience
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Symptom Clusters
This research application is designed to support the assessment of multiple, co-occurring symptoms experienced by patients with cancer, coordinate guideline-based recommendations for symptom management, and deliver instructions to help patients self-manage their symptoms.

Campus Partner

School of Nursing

Tech Highlights
- Mobile app with several types of user data collection using touch gestures
- Data visualization utilizing bubble charts
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Vector Records Repository
This online repository enables the collection and reporting of data relating to the incidence of various species of mosquitoes in the upper Midwest.

Information collected within this database can be shared with other curators of regional and national data repositories.

Campus Partner

Midwest Center of Excellence for Vector-Borne Disease

Tech Highlights
- Custom, complex data entry capabilities for research data, including bulk upload from CSV files
- Large-scale data filtering of millions of records
- Custom roles and permissions for a variety of audiences
- Flexible data visualization, including map-based visualizations
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Wisconsin Central Sands Precipitation Tool
This tool creates choropleth maps based on historical forecasted and observed data for the Wisconsin Central Sands aquifers.

The tool also displays Multivariate ENSO Index values which point to El-Nino and La-Nina effects, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) values for the year selected, and crop water requirements for a variety of agricultural crops.

Campus Partner

Water Systems & Society Research Group

Tech Highlights
- Creation of a variety of choropleth maps based on yearly precipitation and observed data
- Data visualization using bar charts, gauges, and custom graphs
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Johne’s Information Center Website
The primary mission of the Johne’s Information Center is educating veterinarians and animal owners about Johne’s disease.

This project focused on redesigning the layout and information architecture.

Campus Partner

Johne’s Information Center

Tech Highlights
- Interactive historical timeline
- Interactive quizzes
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Hamel Music Center Website
This website was developed to support the Hamel Music Center’s “Name a Seat” campaign.

The Hamel Music Center features state-of-the-art acoustic and recording technology designed to prepare students to perform at the highest of professional standards and allow faculty to offer exceptional and innovative educational experiences.

Campus Partner

UW-Madison School of Music

Tech Highlights
- Collects donation information and builds custom seat inscriptions
- Custom floor plan feature where users can click anywhere on the building floor plan to view images of the selected room
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School of Human Ecology Website
This project focused on redesigning the layout and information architecture for SoHE’s website.

Campus Partner

School of Human Ecology

Tech Highlights
- WordPress
- Custom HTML/CSS/JavaScript
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Soybean Research Database
The Soybean Research Database allows for the collection, storage, and querying of data related to Agronomy Department’s soybean and small grain crops.

The site stores all of the data in a single location and allows multiple people to access the data through the web.

Campus Partner

The Wisconsin Soybean Extension Program

Tech Highlights
- Includes the ability to easily add custom fields to the data to store new variables with future experiments
- Allows researchers to create custom reports from the data
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Student Grouping Tool
This tool was developed to support instructor growth in leading and facilitating classroom discussions.

It allows instructors to survey students about attitudes toward topics and basic demographic information.

The tool will then allow instructors to distribute students into discussion groups to maximize diversity.

Campus Partner

The Discussion Project, School of Education

Tech Highlights
- Custom-built, easy-to-use survey engine for instructors
- Allows for real-time, in-class surveys and grouping students based on their responses
- Includes graphs of student responses while maintaining anonymity of responses
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Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention Games and Quitting App
The Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention team developed a study to measure cravings that users experienced before and after playing a game on a smartphone.

This app tracked how long the game was played and set limits on the amount of time between play sessions in accordance with study parameters.

Campus Partner

Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention

Tech Highlights

Android custom homescreen with built-in reporting capabilities
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Nanodatabase

The Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology is a multi-institutional partnership devoted to investigating the fundamental molecular mechanisms by which nanoparticles interact with biological systems.

This web application allows for improved ways to share internal data among CSN participants.

The purpose of the site is to store data collected from multiple universities in a single location and to allow multiple approved users to access the data through the web.

Campus Partner

The Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology

Tech Highlights

Custom-built Ruby on Rails application
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Market Indicators for Impact App
Designed by UW-Madison researchers, this app was created to help farmers market managers gather and interpret data.

Campus Partner

Kaufman Lab, Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture

Tech Highlights
- Allows users to upload data from CSV files
- Allows users to build custom infographic-based reports
- Integrates with payment systems
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ACTIV
The ACTIV application supports research to collect data from caregivers of children with medical complexity.

By clinically monitoring caregiver confidence longitudinally in real time, researchers explore whether the potential exists not only to link it with downstream health outcomes, but also to target timely interventions to help caregivers at high-risk moments.

Campus Partner

Department of Pediatrics

Tech Highlights
- Research Data collection through text messages
- Data visualization using tables and charts
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Brain Atlas App
The Brain Atlas is an interactive app that allows users to navigate through different cross-sections of the human brain.

The app integrates with learning management systems, allowing the Brain Atlas to be included within courses.

Campus Partner

College of Letters & Science, Communication Sciences & Disorders

Tech Highlights
- LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) tool for identifying regions of the brain
- Leverages SVG images to create toggleable overlays
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Dairyland Initiative Website
The Dairyland Initiative is an information center and building plan assessment program that draws on dairy animal health, production, and behavior research combined with years of field experience in housing design.

Campus Partner

The Dairyland Initiative

Tech Highlights
- Multilingual Site translated into French and Spanish
- Includes custom maps which highlight professionals and industry contacts
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Clean Boats Clean Waters App
The Clean Boats & Clean Waters application provides a method for volunteers to capture data and to educate boaters at water access points about invasive species regulations.

Campus Partner

WI Department of Natural Resources and UW Sea Grant

Tech Highlights

Android mobile app with location awareness and reporting capabilities
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Water Vapor Data Visualization App
This data visualization app helps students understand the water cycle and the role of water vapor.

Students can interact with the website to observe how insolation changes based on latitude and day of the year.

Students can also examine real data from the AOS department at the UW to see how sea surface temperatures, vegetation cover, evaporation and rainfall changed throughout the year.

Campus Partner

Soil Science, Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences

Tech Highlights

Interactive websites with 3D visualizations
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UW Wisconsin App
UW-Madison's official mobile app.

Campus Partner

DoIT Enterprise Internet Services

Tech Highlights
- Presents real-time bus activity and parking availability
- Provides one-stop access to campus resources