Final Project
Project Description
The final project can be done alone or in groups of two or three. The
requirements below are expectations for one person. Groups will be
exepcted to produce larger projects such that each member has done as much
work as if he or she had worked alone.
The goal of the final project is to select a set of users and choose an
information need important to them. This could be a group discussed in
class or one we did not discuss (e.g. teachers, students, patients, etc.).
Then, you must create a new solution to help with that information need.
This could be new technology, community effort, set of policies or
legislation, etc.
The introduction to your project should cover the following:
- Users - who are the users and what defines them as a group (i.e. what
is their social context)
- Information - what are the information needs of this group that you
are addressing? What are the challenges the users face in accessing and
using that information?
- Systems - What systems are available to support these information
needs (if any)?
- Environments - What environmental factors in the users' social context
affect their use of information?
Once you have established the needs and challenges for this group, you
should perform an analysis of how these challenges could be addressed.
There are several options you could take at this stage including (but not
limited to):
- A report - do an analysis of the literature available on your topic to
help you identify potential solutions. Describe those solutions and how
they would
be implemented. This should particularly focus on changes in systems
and/or environments that will affect change. The solutions you propose
must be your own new ideas, not reports of existing systems.
- A study - how to address these information needs may be unclear. As
such, you may choose to conduct a study, interviewing a set of these users
or running an experiment with them to help better describe the challenges
and, potentially, a solution.
- A system - you may build a prototype system that would demonstrate a
possible solution to the problems you identified.
The exact requirements for your final product will vary depending on how
you choose to solve your problem. For a straightforward report, I expect
10-15 pages (per person if you are in a group). If you build a system,
part of this page limit can be met with screen captures and thorough
descriptions of your system.
Structure
Each paper should include the following:
- Users in social context - who are the users and what role are they
playing?
- Information need - what is the need of your users that you are trying
to address in this paper?
- Current state - what systems or support is available to help your
users with their information needs now? Why is that insufficient to
totally address their needs? Support this through interviews with users or
through evaluating the existing support and citing literature to suggest
that existing support is not good enough.
- Your proposed solution - thoroughly describe your proposed solution.
Support your ideas with primary sources (papers, books, etc - not
wikipedia / encyclopedia articles or other summaries).
- Evaluation (if applicable) - show why your idea works. If you've built
a system, have some people try it and report on your findings. If you are
doing a report, present some literature that suggests your approach is a
good one.
- Conclusion
- Broader impacts - describe how the ideas you developed can be more
broadly implemented. Are there lessons from your work that other people
might benefit from knowing? Could your techniques work in other kinds of
systems?
- Bibliography - you should include references to all the literature you
cited. You should have at least 6 referenced sources.
Schedule
To keep you on track, I require progress reports throughout the term. You
will be graded on your progress.
- Feb 19th: Initial report due in class - this should state if you will
be working alone or in a group, list the group members, and give some
initial thoughts in who you might choose as your users or what information
problems seem interesting.
- March 11th: Progress report due in class - you should have identified
your user group and information issue. This report should state what track
you are taking - report, experiment, prototype, or other. You should state
what you believe you will accomplish at the end of the project.
- April 1: Progress report due in class - you should have a full outline
of the text of your report. This should include strong detail on the main
focus of your project. Students doing a report only should have a detailed
outline on their analysis. Students doing an experiment should include
their experimental design. Students creating a prototype should include
sketches and implementation details.
- April 29: First draft of report or prototype due - this
can be very
rough but should show that you have everything in place and essentially
finished. After this, you should be polishing the final draft and
preparing for your
presentation.
- May 6, 8: In Class Presentations - you must present a summary of your
report with a focus on the interesting results you obtained.
- May 13: Projects due in class.
Grading
The final project will be graded as follows:
- 20% - progress reports (5% per report)
- 20% - in class presentation
- 60% - the final paper / prototype