Final Project (Spring 2018)

Due: Sunday, April 29, 2018, by 11:59PM UTC-12 (Anywhere on Earth) (all parts). Your final deliverable will have three pieces: the project itself, a presentation, and a paper. Each have their own submission requirements and instructions, outlined in the sections below.

The Project Itself

Your actual project submission should be a cataloged .zip file with the work you completed during the semester. Include in root of your .zip file a Catalog.pdf file that describes the contents of the archive. If you need to host some material online, you may; include links to that material in the Catalog.pdf file. The contents of the archive will vary based on the nature of your project. If you chose the development track, you should submit the code for the tool. If the tool is runnable locally, you should include the executable. If your tool runs on a server, you should include a link to a working version of the tool. You should also submit any design documents, documentation, or anything else proposed in your project proposal. If you chose the research track, you should submit all the materials used to conduct the research: consent forms, interview scripts, surveys, etc. You should also submit the data itself that was gathered, as well as the results of any analysis and any research design documentation you assembled to prepare for the work. If you chose the content track, you should submit all the materials developed for the content, including scripts, lesson plans, images, outlines, etc. in addition to the final content. If your content lives on the internet, you can feel free to submit a link to the portion available online instead of also uploading it to Canvas. If you have any doubt about what you should submit, talk to your mentor before submitting.

Submission Instructions

Please submit your assignment to the corresponding assignment submission page as a .zip file; this is one of the only assignments that should be submitted as a .zip, not a .pdf. Note that this will not be provided to classmates through peer review or the course library. If you are working on your project on a team, only one person needs to submit this assignment. Make sure to coordinate who is submitting it, however. Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

As with all assignments in this class, each milestone will be graded on a traditional A-F scale based on the extent to which your deliverable met expectations. For the final project, the expectations are those that were set forward in your proposal: your final project will be evaluated based on the extent to which you successfully completed the project you agreed to complete with your mentor. Note that because this assignment is due at the very end of the semester, you will not have the opportunity to revise it if you receive a grade below an A. Your weekly status checks and intermediate milestones should help you ensure you’re on track for an A with your mentor, and to revise your plan accordingly if unforeseen obstacles arise.

The Project Presentation

In addition to the project itself, you’ll also put together a short end-of-class presentation on your work in the course. This is the equivalent of the presentations we would do at the end of this course on-campus, where students and teams would take turns presenting their work to the rest of the class. Your final presentation could be a video of you presenting your project in person; a screen capture with audio of you walking through and demonstrating your tool; a pre-recorded presentation showing off your analysis; a preview trailer for your course content; or any other kind of video presentation. You’re also welcome to make your presentation interactive. If your tool is available on the internet, or if it can be downloaded and run locally, then you’re welcome to include student interaction as part of your presentation. Your presentation should still be more than simply providing the tool (for example, there could be a script of things the viewer should do to experience the tool as part of your video presentation) and must be video-based, but including interactive elements is great. The primary goal of this assignment is to show off what you’ve worked on to your classmates and mentor. If you consent to this, your project presentation will also be added to our course library so that future students in the class can see what you worked on and draw inspiration from it. Who knows: maybe a future team will even come to you asking if they can build on your work.

Submission Instructions

Assignments should be submitted to the corresponding assignment submission page in accordance with the Assignment Submission Instructions. Most importantly, you should submit a single PDF for each assignment. This PDF will be ported over to Peer Feedback for peer review by your classmates. If your assignment involves things (like videos, working software prototypes, etc.) that cannot be provided in PDF, you should provide them separately (either through the class Resources folder or your own upload destination) and submit a PDF that links to or otherwise describes how to access that material. If you are working on your project on a team, only one person needs to submit each assignment. Make sure to coordinate who is submitting each, however. Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

As with all assignments in this class, each milestone will be graded on a traditional A-F scale based on the extent to which your deliverable met expectations. For the project presentation, weaknesses in your project itself will not be held against your presentation, but your presentation ought to still meet expectations: it should report on the motivation behind your work, the actual work you performed, and the results of your work. The goal of this presentation is communication, and you will be evaluated as to how well you communicated the value and context of this work.

Peer Review

After submission, your assignment will be ported to Peer Feedback for review by your mentor and classmates. Grading is not the primary function of this peer review process; the primary function is simply to give you the opportunity to read and comment on your classmates’ ideas. All grades will come from the graders alone. You will typically be assigned four classmates to review. You receive 1.5 participation points for completing a peer review by the end of the day Thursday; 1.0 for completing a peer review by the end of the day Sunday; and 0.5 for completing it after Sunday but before the end of the semester. For more details, see the participation policy.

The Project Paper

Finally, you will also submit a paper on your project. The primary intention of this paper is to allow for an easy transition to continuing with your project after the semester is over. In our area, most conference use SIGCHI format, typically with a page limit of 6 to 10 pages. So, to prepare for possible submission to a conference or journal, you’ll write a 6-page paper in SIGCHI Proceedings format (this one, not Extended Abstracts). You are not required to submit the paper to the conference or journal, of course, but the goal is to make it as straightforward as possible for you to experience the next step. In writing your paper, we recommend selecting a conference or journal most relevant to your work and reviewing some of the papers published there in the past as well. This will help you understand the general priorities of that venue. Do they expect rigorous statistical analysis, or are they more design- and idea-oriented? Are they more interested in the design of the user interaction, or in the design of the tool under the hood? Do they prefer qualitative or quantitative methods? You can also use this review process to choose the venue most appropriate for your work. The primary goal of this assignment is to set you up to take the next step with your project, whether that be submitting it for publication, seeking research funding to continue work, or soliciting investors to turn it into a start-up business. A secondary goal is to give you a more thorough medium to share your work; as with the project presentations, with your permission, we’ll add your paper to the course library for future students to view.

Submission Instructions

Grading Information

As with all assignments in this class, each milestone will be graded on a traditional A-F scale based on the extent to which your deliverable met expectations. For the project presentation, weaknesses in your project itself will not be held against your paper, but your paper ought to still meet expectations: it should report on the motivation behind your work, the actual work you performed, and the results of your work. The paper is, in many ways, a more comprehensive version of the presentation.