Project Overview


An important part of this course is the term project. As a member of a team of around 5 students, you will apply the methods and skills learned in class (and hopefully elsewhere) to the design, prototypic implementation, and evaluation of an application. The project consists of several parts, which will be graded separately. Each team has to produce joint deliverables, which will be the basis for the grades of all team members. The team members will be asked for feedback on the performance of the other team members. This subjective feedback may be used to adjust individual scores. Team members are also required to document their activities, e.g. in the form of work sheets.

Project Topic


The members of a team can select their own project topic, subject to my approval. Ideally, the teams should have chosen a topic by the end of the second week; if necessary, you can postpone this decision for up to a week, but this will leave you with less time for the actual project work.
Follow this link for some suggestions for possible topics. You can also look at previous projects to get an idea for the topics other students worked on. I have put together a checklist with a few things to consider when you're going through the process of selecting your project topic.

Project Organization


The first part of the task will be to select a project, and to establish the requirements that will serve as the basis for the later evaluation of the completed project. Then a sequence of prototypes of your selected application will be implemented. In many cases, due to time constraints, the initial prototype will not be fully functional, but it should have a core part that can be used for evaluation purposes. The prototypes will be evaluated by a different team. Finally, there will be a presentation on the project. This presentation will focus on the final version and the evaluation by the evaluation team. It must include information on the initial user requirements, design, and implementation provided by documentation made available through Web pages on the team accounts on the hornet system.
The following paragraphs provide you with more details on the different parts of the project. Included is information on the time frame, and the contribution of the part to the overall grade. An overview of the due dates is also contained in the class schedule.
We’ll use Trac Wikis for the project documentation and organization. The Wikis are assigned to the teams during Week 2, and I’ve put together template for the main Wiki pages. The templates are available when you create a new Wiki pager, give you a blueprint for the organization of your own Wiki, and also describes what kinds of documentation I expect from you. You do not have to follow the Wiki structure precisely, but your documentation should address the main topics identified there, and they should be easy to identify.

A Few Notes on Teamwork


A substantial degree of your grade in this class depends on the overall performance of your team. This can be good (you do nothing, and still get a good grade) or bad (you do all the work, but it is not enough). Ideally, every team member should contribute a roughly equal share. In reality, this is often not the case because team members have different backgrounds, experience, work habits, cultures, etc. Just like in a professional work environment, you have to find a balance between looking after your own interest, and contributing to the overall team effort. If at any point you feel that there are serious problems with your project team, feel free to talk to me, and we will try to find a solution.

Project Presentations


The final presentations for the project will be given as a joint presentation by the development and the evaluation team. The development team will present the task, purpose, design, and implementation of the system, and the evaluation team will report on the evaluation of the system. A short demo of the main functionality of the system should be integrated into the development team's part.
The final presentations will be given during the lecture and lab times of the last week in the quarter. There will be time limits based on the overall number of projects in each section of the class.

Grading


The overall score for the project is 100 points. 80 out of these 100 points come out of my evaluation of the team project, and usually every team member gets the same score. Up to 20 points come from an evaluation of your team mates, calculated as the average of all your team mates' scores for your work. However, I reserve the right to adjust this score, especially if everybody gives all of their team mates the highest possible score without thorough justification. If you don't submit your evaluation of the team members, you may not receive any points for this part.

Project Grading Scheme

  • Project Overview: 10 (Week 2)
  • Background and Related Work: 10 (Week 4)
  • System Design: 10 (Week 4)
  • System Implementation: 10 (Week 6)
  • Experiments, Evaluation, Conclusions: 10 (Week 8)
  • Presentations: 20 (Week 6 + 10)
  • Team Evaluations: 10 (Week 10)
  • Mutual Team Member Evaluation: 20 (Week 10)