This page describes the requirements for the group effort portion of the group project. The individual effort part comes first.

Table of Contents

Grading

The group project grade (worth 20% of your final grade) will be comprised of the following components:

  • Proposal (3.5%)
  • Updated proposal (1.5%)
  • Check in 1 (2.5%)
  • Check in 2 (2.5%)
  • Final deliverables (10%)
    • Final paper (4%)
    • Final presentation (3%)
    • Video (3%)

An additional 15% of your final grade will be assigned for group participation as follows:

  • Filling out group feedback (5%)
  • Group participation (10%)

See each section below for individual grading criteria.

Project proposal

Once your groups have been formed, you will use all of the papers and summaries created by you and your team members in order to form a project proposal. The proposal should be a well-written document in PDF format, 2–3 pages long, consisting of:

  • Project title
  • Project idea, including motivation (this should be an expanded version of the summary of one of the papers)
  • Planned contributions
  • Plan of attack with weekly milestones (e.g., a rough plan of how you will accomplish the work)
  • Skills needed to accomplish the project
  • What hardware, software, or other resources you might need, and how you plan to get them
  • Success criteria (How will you know if you succeed? I will grade you partially on whether you met your own criteria.)
  • Group members and detailed roles, including who will contribute which skills (see “Skills” below)

If you are having a hard time with your proposal, please come to my office hours, email me, or otherwise discuss it with me, well in advance of the due date.

Advice

Whether you are doing a study or an implementation, your goal is to focus—focus on what you want to show or find out and the set of work that will get you to that point. As you begin, you will have a difficult time focusing, but I expect you to gain focus quickly. Part of the way to get said focus is to read—read many, many research papers related to your project. Don’t just read the bare minimum required for the class, but look at lots! You don’t have to read everything in-depth, but cultivate an understanding of the area in which you want to do your project and find examples of what you think are successful projects. Those papers will help you understand what focus looks like for that kind of project.

Skills

Ensure that the skillset of the group matches the needs of the project. This is not the time to learn to program or to run a user study if nobody in the group has ever done those things, or anything close to them.

The detailed description of team member roles should reflect the needed and available skills; e.g., not just “Jane will do the programming and Fred will do the design”, but “Jane did machine learning in her internship with Google and will handle the gesture recognition component of the project while Fred’s experience in HCIN-730 will allow him to design an ethnographic study.”

Projects involving hardware

For hardware projects, there are many possible components and platforms to use. I recommend using something that is Arduino-based, as there is a lot of support online for this platform. In particular, the Light Blue Bean is a newer Arduino-compatible platform that supports Bluetooth Low Energy and has a built-in batter, making it nice for wearable projects. Good resources for hardware projects include SparkFun, Adafruit, and SeeedStudio, as well as the Arduino website and forums.

If you want to do a project involving hardware, the lab has a collection of hardware that’s kept in the “cage”. You can see a mostly-current list here. If I don’t have the needed parts, I will help you determine what you might need and where to order it.

I also have some larger resources already available for loan: one Oculus Rift DK1, one Pebble smartwatch, one Samsung Galaxy Gear 1 smartwatch, five Google Glass units, a Samsung Galaxy S3 phone, and a Google Nexus phone.

You may also use the 3D printers and laser cutter in the lab, but you need to have my permission and training first. (If you’ve taken HCIN-720, you’re set.)

Projects involving software

For software projects, there are a number of ways to go. I personally am a big fan of Python, which can use Pygame for simple GUIs and Qt for more complex ones. On the Mac, both of these can be installed via Homebrew. Another option is Kivy, which is a cross-platform Python framework which will let you use Python to create both mobile and desktop apps.

Alternatively, using HTML and Javascript is a feasible approach. Cordova will let you translate applications written this way into mobile apps.

If you need an Apple developer account for this class, please let me know ASAP and I will help you.

Deliverables

There are several items due at various points through the course; see the right sidebar for the dates. Each deliverable should be turned in via Direct Message or file sharing to me on Slack. For all items, I expect high-quality writing: check your spelling, avoid passive voice, and proofread (note writing resources on the main page).

Note that I will only accept PDF format for documents you turn in!

Project proposal and presentation

See above for guidelines on the written project proposal document. You will also, on the due date for the proposal, present your proposal to the class. This will be a slide presentation no more than five minutes long (strictly enforced!), followed by a discussion with the class and feedback from me.

Someone on your team should be taking notes during the feedback portion, as you will need them for your updated proposal.

Proposal grading criteria

The proposal is worth 3.5% of your final grade. The criteria are:

  • All required information is included and complete (1.5%).
  • Your writing is clear and comprehensible without significant spelling or grammar errors (1%).
  • Your presentation is of the correct length and clearly communicates your proposal (1%).

Updated proposal

After your presentation, you will update your written proposal based on the feedback from me and the class, and turn in the new version. See the sidebar for the due date.

Updated proposal grading criteria

The updated proposal is worth 1.5% of your final grade. The criteria are:

  • You have responded to the feedback and updated your proposal to reflect the concerns of the instructor and class (1.5%).

Team participation weekly check-ins

Each week, you will (individually) fill out a very brief survey, explaining what each team member, including your self, did to contribute to the project during the preceding week. The responses to this survey will help me understand how your group is functioning and alert me to any problems in the group early.

Team participation grading criteria

Your team participation is worth an overall 15% of your final grade. This is divided into two parts.

Filling out the team participation survey every week is worth 5% of your final grade. I will forgive one missed survey, so your grade will be divided evenly amongst the number of surveys minus one.

Your group participation grade is worth 10% of your final grade; this grade will be based on the feedback from your team members.

Mid-project check-ins

At two roughly evenly-spaced intervals throughout the semester, you will turn in mid-project check-in documents. These documents are intended to serve several purposes: first, to give you some concrete deadlines to get work done by; second, to get you to self-assess your progress; and finally, to work towards the final paper deliverable.

As with the final deliverable, the check-in documents should be in the format of an ACM SIGCHI Extended Abstract, and roughly in the pattern of a research paper such as those we read in class. Your goal is to make progress towards the final paper; as such, each check-in should be a clearly-written draft paper with at least the following sections:

  • Introduction, including the project idea, motivation, planned contributions, etc…
  • Related work section with more fleshed-out relevant work
  • Outline of body with the approach you are taking
  • Current milestones with progress towards each
  • Remaining milestones with planned progress towards each
  • If changes are made to milestones, explanations of why

At both check-in dates, you will turn in this paper draft; additionally, at the second check-in, you will turn in a draft of your final video (see “Final deliverables” below). The video draft can include parts that don’t require a working prototype (if you are doing an implementation project) such as explanation of motivation, process involved, etc.

Mid-project check-in grading criteria

The mid-project check-ins are each worth 2.5% of your final grade, for a cumulative total of 5%. The grading criteria are the same for both, and are as follows:

  • All required information is included and complete (1.5%).
  • Your writing is clear and comprehensible without significant spelling or grammar errors (1%).

Final paper

All groups will turn in a final paper describing their project. The paper must be in the format of an ACM SIGCHI Extended Abstract, and in the pattern of a research paper such as those we read in class. This latter part means that you should not include the milestones sections; the paper should essentially be a draft of something that could be submitted to a conference such as CHI or MobileHCI. The paper must be submitted in PDF format via Slack, and should contain roughly the following sections:

  • Introduction, including the project idea, motivation, planned contributions, etc…
  • Related work section with more fleshed-out relevant work
  • Outline of body with the approach you are taking
  • Results and analysis
  • Conclusions and future work

If you did not accomplish what you set out to do, you should spend some time in your paper explaining why, but more importantly, what you learned.

Final paper grading criteria

The final paper is worth 4% of your final grade; the criteria are as follows:

  • All required information is included and complete (1%).
  • You achieved what you said you would do, taking into account updates during the project check-ins (2%).
  • Your writing is clear and comprehensible without significant spelling or grammar errors (1%).

Final video

In addition to the paper, you will also create a 30-second video describing the project, submitted via a link to a YouTube or Vimeo video. The video should be in the style of a CHI video preview, and clearly show:

  • the name of your project;
  • the course number and year of this class;
  • what you were trying to accomplish;
  • and what you did accomplish.

Final video grading criteria

The final video is worth 3% of your final grade, graded according to the requirements above.

Final presentation

During finals week, each group will present their project to the class in a 15-minute talk (strictly enforced). For groups that implemented something, a demo is appropriate (although not required).

The talk should follow roughly the layout of your paper, introducing and motivating the project, summarizing the related work, discussing what you did and how you did it, and talking about your findings and the implications thereof.

Final presentation grading criteria

The final presentation is worth 4% of your final grade, according to the following criteria:

  • Slides are clear, easy to read, have correct grammar and spelling, and consist of more than just text (1%)
  • Presentation is practiced, presenters speak clearly and explain the project well, presenters do not just read the slides (1%)
  • Presentation presents the required information (2%)