HCI Team Project 

Milestone Due Dates

Proposal	April 14, 6pm. On paper at the begining of the class
Progress Reports	April 26, May 17, 6pm. On paper at the begining of the class
In-class Presentation and Demo	Wed. May 31.
Final Written Report	Wed. May 31, 6pm. On paper at the begining of the class

Introduction

For the project, you will work in teams of either 5, or 6 students on a problem of your choosing that is interesting, significant, and relevant to HCI or UI/UX developments. The ultimate goal of your course project is to develop a new tool to tackle some interesting real-world problem. At the end of the quarter, we will hold a competition during our regular class time for your project demonstration. All members of a group will receive the same grade on group work. Therefore, it is in your interest to choose other group members (ideally, first day of the class) who have the same goal in the class as you do. It is also in your interest to work together and ensure that all tasks are completed effectively. Your scores on group work may be adjusted based on your contribution.

The assignment is flexible: choose a topic of interest to you and your group and carry out a cohesive, complete project based around it. The range of possible topics that you can choose among is broad. However, the project you pick should incorporate wide range of HCI techniques. The relative weight between these components is up to you to propose--for example, it is reasonable to design and prototype an interface, with the emphasis being on the "realism" of the prototype. It also is reasonable to try to design a mechanism to choose between two equally-plausible interface choices. Here the emphasis most likely would be on evaluation, with rudimentary implementation. I think the most interesting problems will be ones in which you identify and work with some "client" to develop a solution to one of their problems. Such clients can include organizations with which you are involved, work site, etc. You can propose to carry out a project as part of a larger effort. However the caution here is that you will need to be able to separate out the contribution made by this class' project from the rest.

You will need to prepare a written project proposal and get it approved by the instructor,  project progress reports, prepare a final report (written), and give an oral presentation/demo (in class). Note that evaluations involving human subjects may fall under IRB requirements.  If this is the case, IRB training and submission of the needed proposal can be (indeed, should be) included in the work done for the project.   Information about the IRB can be found at http://www.cpp.edu/~research/irb/

Here are some more details about these pieces:

• All the project reports should be typed and checked for spelling and grammar. No handwritten reports will be accepted.
• Projects will be group projects (5-6 members, with more members indicating a larger project.)
• Peer-assessment: Individual student's grades for projects will be influenced by their teamwork as evaluated by their project group members. This will be applied as an overall weight to the term project grade.
• Demo-evaluation: There will be an evaluation forms each individual student will need to submit for each demo.  This will be factored into the grade for the in class presentation/demo.  

Project proposal

The proposal should include the following information: (2 pages or less)

○     Project participants and email addresses

○     Problem statement

○     Work plan sketch (what tasks do you expect to do and in what order, how long do you expect them to take, and who will be responsible for the tasks).

●     You can take as much space as you need for the project report, but I would guess that most would be in the two-page range.

●     You need to have an acceptable proposal submitted by the deadline.

Progress status report

In this report, you should assess the progress you are making on your project and update the work plan as necessary. Include your group's names and email addresses on this document as well. This is not likely to be a long report--just a checkpoint document to make sure you're on a good track-- towards completing the project in the available time.

A 2-3 page summary of the problem your project team is solving, and your high-level approach.
Start with your proposal or previous progress report (if any) and add the following content to your progress report .

The progress summary report should inform about, 

• Design decisions,
• The target audience for the project (who the users are)
• What tools/technologies will you use and why?
• What is the overall design? What are the core features? 
• How does the UI/UX satisfy the needs of your users?
• Screen shots of the user interface or a prototype (in your intial progress reports). 
• Current Status
• What is the current status of the implementation?
• What is left to do?

Final written Report

A comprehensive report describing the project. This should be a "complete" document, so it should include front matter (title page, abstract, table of content, chapters), problem statement, explain your design and implementation and evaluation. This report should stand by itself as the archival description of the project.  It’s likely to be reasonably large document – four or five pages is too short! Written report will be evaluated both on the quality of the project but also on the quality, comprehensibility and completeness of the presentation.

 

• The report may include portions of your earlier reports (proposal, progress reports, prototypes, concept, design, etc.).
• The project report should be typed and checked for spelling and grammar. No handwritten reports will be accepted.
• Your evaluation (or evaluation strategy)
• What are the characteristics of users that you would invite to evaluate this system?
• What kind of tasks will you ask them to perform?
• What metrics will you use to evaluate the success of your system?
• Comparison with existing applications (which)?
• Performance measures (how will you measure them)?
• Other criteria?
• You should address the same questions as those you have addressed in the previous reports, only with more details, especially regarding some of the challenges that you need to solve and your experimental results if any. 
• You should also include your conclusions from the study and point out how your work can be further extended (i.e., future work).
• References should list ALL sources that you used for your project. It is recommended that you list your references in the APA style. All team members must be involved in preparing this section, and provide a list of URL's, books, or other sources that they used for the project.
• Provide as much graphics as you can—not only UI components, but any kind of diagrams and illustrations that will make it easier for us to understand and evaluate your effort. Graphics are always helpful, you have probably heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”!
• Do not just show the diagrams—for all figures, tables, and diagrams provide some narrative discussion! Unfortunately, diagrams, particularly technical diagrams, are rarely if ever self-explanatory. You should document the alternative solutions that you considered as well as the arguments for the final choice. Diagrams only represent your final solution, but do not explain why you decided on this solutions and what alternatives were considered. Hence, all diagrams must be accompanied with explanation and discussion of alternatives and tradeoffs. Anything that could lead to ambiguity or misunderstanding on the reviewer’s part, should be clearly explained. Explanations should be written in prose and key arguments highlighted in bullet points. 
• There is no limit on the number of pages for the report. Of course, you should avoid stuffing your report with redundant or irrelevant material. 

Final project presentations / demos

• Demo Evaluation Form  and Team Member Evaluation Form
• The project schedule will be posted in Piazza late May. 
• Total time 8 mintues per each team. Each team will have 3 minutes to present + 3 minutes of  Demontration + 2 mintues question/answer.
• When your 6 minutes are up, I will stop you and we will move to the Q/A time. During those 2 minutes, the next team should begin to setup. We will start the next presentation exactly 2 minutes later. If you have trouble setting up, you will lose time for your presentation. As a result, I highly recommend that all teams do a walkthrough of their presentation before Wednesday, just to make sure that whatever resources you need are available.
• In terms of content, you will have to make hard decisions about what to include in your presentation (and what to cut). Do not feel like you have to jam every technical component into your talk; indeed, presentations that sacrifice clarity for overstuffing inevitably fare poorly. Remember that you have the project report as an avenue for communicating all of the details of your approach, so you are free to use the presentation as a higher-level opportunity to motivate your project, give clear insight into your approach, and give us a flavor of your overall system and results. Manage your time carefully.
• Specifically, you should probably use fairly large fonts and clear figures.
• All team members must participate!

• As we assess your presentation, here are some of the points we will consider:

• Preparation and poise. Did you speak to the audience rather than look at the slides? Did you expand on what was on the slides rather than read them word-by-word? Did you speak at a reasonable pace rather than too fast or too slow? Did you appear to be spontaneous and fluid, avoiding the use of distracting mannerisms and colloquialisms?
• Use of allotted time. Was there a good balance between inspirational material and technical content? Did you complete your presentation in time? Did you have to skip some important material (e.g., conclusions) in order to complete your presentation in time?
• Use of visual aids. Did you use pictures/diagrams to explain your ideas? Did you have graphs of experimental results? Did the slides contain short, clear bullets rather than long sentences and/or cryptic equations?

Project suggestions

There will be few indutry projects (strict deliverables) available and will be offered first come first serve. You can also use projects initiated in previous relevant courses (e.g., IR course) and propose to make substantial develpment in the current iteration. Also, If you need suggestions on projects, please see me. There may be ideas associated with some ongoing research projects that can be examined.