October 24 -- Project #2 - First announcement, overview

See this Project #2 page for the topic, information visualization. As of December 4th, the page includes a final handin checklist.

October 10 -- Final Project Guideline page available

Here are the final Project #1 guidelines (Oct. 10th).

Here are the previous Project #1 guidelines.

Logistics: Getting partners; Choosing projects:

You will be choosing your first project on Friday, Sept. 17th. So before then you need to pair up with someone else in the class. Feel free to mail the list to search for someone with similar schedules or whatever. Of course you must join the list before you can mail to it. Join by going to this page.

You and your partner should choose your top five of the numbered projects on the projects #1 list page. I will take your prioritized list of five and draw the lists in a lottery, live in the Sept. 17th class.

The Project #1 list

Access it on this page.

Introduction to the course projects:

The projects in this course are not conventional programming projects. They are designed to help you learn the many aspects of HCI. So each project will illustrate one or more of these aspects and will include some or all of the following and additional ones in specific cases. Just what is required will be laid out for each project.

The projects will each be worked on by a team of two students. Choosing the pairings is not a trivial task and we can't expect to satisfy everyone. Teams of three are strongly discouraged. It has been my experience that a team of three rarely can produce a project that is 50% better than a team of two, which would be required.

The list of projects for Project #1 of the two projects can be found on this page The due dates for the various projects will be settled shortly.

• A design document, with a first draft required up front. There are a number of components of a good design, including the goal of the system, its underlying model and its intended user community.
• An evaluation plan, with a first draft required up front.
• Commented code.
• Instrumentation within the code to log user interactions. The logs so generated would be part of what is to be handed in.
• An evaluation session with brief comments by the tester and creator, especially comments on how the project might be altered to change or improve it. It's a good idea to try to recruit non-CS major friends or acquaintances.
• A user manual and/or on-line help built in.
• In all the documents and code, the discussion should be phrased in terms of the principles described in the book, including additional points made in class or from other sources dealing with HCI.
• The writing in all of the above must be in clear and concise and grammatically correct English. This is always a requirement of any HCI system that's properly designed for (English-speaking) users. In addition to your tester, two important "users" of your system will be Professor Futrelle and the TA.
  You must not assume that your user community is made up of computer science experts such as your classmates, Professor Futrelle or the TA. That would be a mistake.

Building a big fancy system, but skimping on the other required aspects of the project will result in a poor grade. The former will not compensate for the latter.

Go to ISU570 home page. or RPF's Teaching Gateway or homepage