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1. Introduction
The project will be an important and significant item in the class. It is expected that students devise and complete a project either on their own, or as paired with another student. There are several types of projects which will be acceptable (each idea will need to be discussed and approved by the instructor), though preference will be given to projects that either integrate aspects of the student’s ongoing research in a new direction. Acceptable types of projects include, but are not limited to:
- Design of a novel groupware system
- Evaluation of a system with a focus on communication/coordination systems
- Qualitative investigation of an existing set of practices regarding communication/coordination
- Design of a novel tool for PI data collection
- Study of a tool for PI data collection / visualization / analysis
- Design of a tool that integrates
The main deliverables for the project will be: a proposal document that outlines a topic, research question of interest, and a plan for conducting that work (15%); a short “mad-minute” presentation given to the class that summarizes the plan for this project (5%); a relevant literature review (5%), and a final paper written in CSCW format (40%).
Sample project areas:
- Distributed collaboration spaces (e.g. tabletops)
- Mobile media spaces / collaborative workrooms
- Communication practices of health proxies
- Mobile devices in collabrative workrooms
- Zoomable VideoArms
- VideoArms with height visualizations
- Zoom lines on Video Arms
- NPR & Expressive Embodiments
- Repeating patterns in PI data
- Multivariate data in sprial visualizations
- Geographic data in spiral visualizations
- Making matterns of movement visually accessible (traces?)
- Ethnographic study of Quantified Selfers (PI people!)
- Role of personalization in visualizations for personal meaning (not just data, but how it is represented and presented)
2. Timeline & Deliverables
- Jan 19: Project discussion: Create three (or more) project ideas, and share them with the class. Describe problem, articulate a potential approach, and how you'd evaluate the idea.
- Jan 23 (week of): Meet with Tony
- Jan 30: Project proposal due (~3-6 pages): This is your formal project proposal, and it is a contract. It lays out the motivation for your work, the objectives, and the research question you are addressing. It spells out the milestones, a schedule for the work you'll deliver, and your deliverables. (I would recommend having a deliverable of some sort every two weeks. This helps us to keep our expectations (yours and mine) in sync. Also, if you intend on running a study, ethics needs to be in by here, too.
- Feb 6 (week): Meet with me
- Feb 16: Project mad minute: Give a quickie presentation about your proposal: what's the problem / question; what have others done about this question (related work); what will you be doing (what is your approach). ~10 minutes. Be prepared to answer some questions. Be prepared to ask others some questions.
- Mar 2: Literature survey (~3-6 pages): A summary of literature that is relevant to your research question of interest. This should be in the form of a "related work" section of a typical research paper. It can later be used for your final project report. I expect you to have found ~10 pieces of related work (I can help with this). Saul Greenberg has a nice article on writing literature reviews.
- Mar 5 (week of): Meet with me
- Mar 18 (week of): Meet with me
- Apr 10 & 12: Project presentations: 15 minute talk + 5 minutes for questions.
- Apr 12: Project report 8-10 pages in ACM CHI format & archive of materials/software