Independent solution engineering project · November 2026
An explainable routing assistant for a hypothetical university housing desk. Compare simple rules with text matching—and see when the system should ask a person.
Synthetic data · Independent prototype · No university deployment or customer interviews claimed
The customer problem
A hypothetical housing desk receives maintenance problems, connectivity questions, contract changes, and community concerns. Before helping, staff must work out who owns the issue.
The design goal is a useful suggestion with an explanation and a clear review path. Queue definitions and workflow requirements remain discovery assumptions until validated with staff.
Interactive proof
Both approaches run locally in your browser. Try a clear request, then a vague or multi-team request. Neither approach understands urgency or replaces staff judgment.
Suggested next step
Staff confirmation requiredAsk staff to verify the suggested owner and collect the details required by that team.
Rules abstain on a tie or no keyword match. A distinct keyword match can still be wrong.
wifi · laptop
Evidence before complexity
A reproducible comparison on 24 hand-authored synthetic development cases: 16 single-team requests and 8 intended for human review. These results describe this small test set, not production performance.
| Approach | Expected decisions matched | Auto-suggestion coverage | Accuracy among suggestions | Review cases caught |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keyword rules | 23 / 24 (95.8%) | 70.8% | 94.1% | 7 / 8 |
| TF-IDF matching | 22 / 24 (91.7%) | 75.0% | 88.9% | 6 / 8 |
TF-IDF suggests an owner more often, but makes more mistakes. Keep staff confirmation for both. No claim of time savings, real-world accuracy, or readiness for unattended routing is supported.
| Request | Expected | Rules | TF-IDF |
|---|---|---|---|
| The sink keeps leaking | Facilities | Facilities | Facilities |
| Please repair the broken window latch | Facilities | Facilities | Facilities |
| The shower drain needs repair | Facilities | Facilities | Facilities |
| My heater needs replacement | Facilities | Facilities | Facilities |
| I need a password reset | IT Support | IT Support | IT Support |
| My laptop cannot connect to wifi | IT Support | IT Support | IT Support |
| The portal login is locked | IT Support | IT Support | IT Support |
| My ethernet connection keeps dropping | IT Support | IT Support | IT Support |
| Please cancel my housing agreement | Housing Administration | Housing Administration | Housing Administration |
| I have a question about the move out deadline | Housing Administration | Housing Administration | Housing Administration |
| I need a room transfer | Housing Administration | Housing Administration | Housing Administration |
| My housing bill was charged twice | Housing Administration | Housing Administration | Housing Administration |
| I need help with a roommate conflict | Residence Life | Residence Life | Residence Life |
| My neighbors are making noise during quiet hours | Residence Life | Residence Life | Residence Life |
| How can I join community social activities | Residence Life | Residence Life | Residence Life |
| I want to meet the resident assistant | Residence Life | Residence Life | Residence Life |
| What should I do | Human review | Human review | Human review |
| Can you help me tomorrow | Human review | Human review | Human review |
| I need to discuss something | Human review | Human review | Human review |
| The sink is leaking and wifi keeps dropping | Human review | Facilities | Human review |
| My roommate is noisy and I need a password reset | Human review | Human review | IT Support |
| The heater is broken and my housing bill is incorrect | Human review | Human review | Facilities |
| I lost a blue umbrella | Human review | Human review | Human review |
| I need a dining meal plan refund | Human review | Human review | Human review |
The evaluation set informed development: a minimum-evidence guard was added after a regression test. This is not an untouched holdout. Paraphrases, negation, new queues, and sensitive scenarios need independent evaluation.
Solution design
Manual routing preserves context. Rules are transparent but brittle. TF-IDF reuses example language but still relies on words in common. LLM routing would introduce additional cost, privacy, and evaluation needs; it is not implemented or benchmarked here.
Python routing and evaluation, a browser demo using the same exported weights, four queues, review gates, and explanations. No external inference, request storage, authentication, or ticket-system integration is implemented.
Housing staff validate ownership. IT and Facilities check boundaries. Integration specialists assess approved APIs. Privacy reviewers define role access and retention. These are proposed delivery roles, not existing partnerships.
Feedback → product decisions
Ask staff where routing fails today, which details they need, and what incorrect assignment costs. Validate the four-queue assumption before expanding scope.
In a consented pilot, categorize corrections: wrong owner, missing context, multiple issues, or unknown request. Prioritize missed review cases over higher coverage.
Evaluate on newly labeled examples, compare staff correction rates, and test access controls before integrating. No customer feedback has been collected for this project yet.
Technical readiness
Built as an independent portfolio prototype with AI-assisted implementation. Synthetic examples only. Proposed production controls are documented separately from working features.