CPE/CSC 486-S09 Human-Computer Interaction Theory and Design Team Project

Project Overview

In this class, a team-based term project is a major component of the overall course work. As in the last quarter, the theme should be on the use of interaction methods that are not keyboard or mouse centric. The project may be the continuation of work from last quarter, but there has to be a significant change in the work to be done. This could be the use of a different interaction method, a major enhancement in functionality (relevant for interaction aspects), a redesign of the interface, or an in-depth usability evaluation of last quarter's project, accompanied by a redesign of the interface.

The emphasis of the project should be on the user interaction and user interface aspects, not so much on the underlying functionality. You can also use an existing product and develop an alternative interaction paradigm or user interface for it.

Alternatively, you can also perform a usability evaluation of an existing product. This evaluation has to be significantly more extensive than the one performed last quarter, and must include external participants, and possibly also external clients (e.g. owners of the system).

Project Topic

Each team can select their own topic, but you need to coordinate the topic selection with me.

Project Organization

The project is a team effort, with a team size of about 3-5 people. We will probably use Blackboard or TRAC Wikis as repositories for the project documents.

For a ten-week project, my experience is that bi-weekly milestones are a reasonable way of documenting report on the progress of the project. The following table gives an overview of major tasks and the respective milestones. Your team may define its own structure for the milestones and schedule.

Project Presentations

There will be an initial project presentation or display where you present your project idea, the initial design, a development plan, and a plan for a usability evaluation of the final product or system. The presentation should be accompanied by a document that describes the above aspects. If practical, this initial presentation will be combined with the CSC Open House activities on April 17 and 18. The Open House event is also an excellent opportunity for data collection.

At the end of the quarter, your team will present the results of your work. In the final presentation, you will demonstrate the final product, and discuss important aspect of its conception, design, and development from a user-centered and usability-oriented perspective. This presentation is accompanied by a final report. If you selected a usability evaluation as proejct, the main deliverable is a written evaluation report. It may include suggestions for improvements of the evaluated system, design documents, or prototypes. If it is practical, the presentations will be given to a larger audience, either as a formal presentation, or through a poster session. In the past, we have combined the final poster displays with those of other classes on the last Friday of the quarter.

Project Documentation

The documentation for your project should document the purpose, goals and objectives, requirements, data collection outcomes, and final product of your project. If appropriate, you can also discuss the design process, main interaction methods, and evaluation methods that you used. This document does not have to be very long, and you can refer to or include earlier documents (e.g. documents produced for the milestones). The main part of the documentation can consist of images of the system you develop as the final class project, but it should be accompanied by some explanations that address the issues mentioned above. Please post the documentation on the Blackboard discussion board.

Mutual Team Member Evaluations

Since it can be difficult for me to judge the contributions of individual team members to the overall effort, I am asking for your feedback on the performance of your team mates. Follow this link to a template Mutual Team Member Evaluation Sheet as an Excel file. I reserve the right to adjust these scores, however, especially in cases where all team members give each other the maximum score without sufficient justification. I may also ask you for further documentation to support your contribution to the team, or your evaluation of a team member's contribution.

Grading