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CS Dept Advising App
You must design a self-contained CS department information and advising tablet app meant to be used by current CS majors or LTSC ("Letters & Sciences" which is the code UMD uses for students who are not yet in majors) majors looking to transfer into the CS LEP. You will need to explore the current CS website(s) to determine what information about things like degree requirements, options, career planning etc. most students require, as well as what forms or other resources should be in this new app. This needs to include the ability to create and assess a graduation plan, but would have other things as well. This would include information about courses, degree requirements, entering the LEP, and staying in the LEP. It might also include information about the Iribe Center, other things connected to advising appointments or obtaining registration stamps, research opportunities, recruiting events, etc. Perhaps imagine a "best of" from the undergraduate website relating to advising with some new elements that would be useful, in a well-structured tablet app. New elements could include things like ways the app can be used to accomplish useful actions such as students making an advising appointment, interactively building a graduation plan and getting automated feedback, or professors posting a research opportunity in a way that it could be easily found by students using the app in their search for one. Even though you are potential users, you should not think that all users are like you. Pay careful attention to the form factor of a tablet device and the use of text size and graphical elements. Your job is to design and prototype an app that could actually be used by the department. The real app obviously would have an Internet connection, but your prototype will not. You can and should identify what data might need to be pulled from a live connection in reality, but for the purposes of this prototype, have that data stored locally (in places such as arrays or text files that you read). As an example, if the real app would pull data from Testudo to see how many sections of CMSC434 were open at the moment, your prototype might have a static list of such information. If you envision connections to external resources, (a) do so sparingly, (b) indicate it through screenshots of such resources, and (c) make sure that you are not counting the features they support as features that you have designed! Example bare-minimum requirements It will be important that you do not drift into other domains (ie: this should not be used for things for which ELMS or the Iribe Kiosk should be used). When building your prototype you will need to populate the system with a wide variety of real information in order for us to fully evaluate your system. This page may be updated with additional guidelines within the next few days... |