For the deadline of each step, please refer to the page "Planning and projects".
The objective of the project is to experiment with a novel form of human-computer interaction that improves the status quo. Students must find a single project partner from the class.
Professors will be present for consulting sessions during the whole semester, usually after the lecture session but also in scheduled “project sessions”. You are expected to work on your project during your spare time. The professors do the evaluation of the project based on a report and a defense at the end of the semester.
Each group of students choose the research question or problem to address in their project. This research question is “moderated” by the professors. You must work on an interaction for which you can anticipate benefits that you state clearly. This could be any system for which a typical graphical user interface would have strong limitations. Instructors verify that the idea is relevant to the course: the interaction must be novel, your motivations must be clearly stated and convincing, and you should be able to evaluate the interaction with a prototype (which can be anywhere between high and very low fidelity).
Each group must interact with the professors to submit their ideas for validation. This can be done by e-mail, or at the breaks during the lectures.
The following work has two sides: design and evaluation.
Once an instructor has validated your project's problem, you must make a quick review of the state of the Art: what approaches have been tried for your problem? Which systems were implemented? What are their limits?
In the next stage, you design the Human-computer interaction. The design must follow a user centered approach: the interaction must be designed so that is satisfies the users’ needs as well as possible. Specifically, your main goal must not be to experiment with novel devices: the novel devices should be introduced only to serve users’ needs.
Each group makes a formal presentation of their design to the class. Plan for 8 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of brainstorm. This is very short, be focused! Address the following points:
You prototype the interaction to evaluate it. Depending on the feasibility, you create either a low or a high fidelity prototype. You will be able to prototype the interaction with specialized input/output devices from Fabrication Laboratory (FabLab) on the campus (called FabMSTIC). You will be able to use rapid fabrication tools to build your own devices. Do not hesitate to ask your tutor for more devices if you are looking for something that is not available at the FabLab.
Each group makes a formal presentation of their prototype and experimentation plan. Plan for 8 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of questions. This is very short, be focused!
You experiment with the created interaction, in particular by having non-members of the project use it.
You evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your prototype while taking great care to separate technical problems (the prototype does not satisfies the specifications) from conceptual problems (stemming from the analysis and/or the design).
On the last week, each group defend their projects. The defense should emphasize on illustrating the problem, the approach, and the results through demonstrations, images, videos, and graphs. Plan for 15 minutes of formal presentation with slides / video / demo, and 10 minutes for questions from the jury. Structure of the final presentation:
One week after the defense, students should send a report to both professors as a static web page. No additional project work between the final presentation and the report will be taken into account, except the writing of the report. You may want to check the history of projects for this course. Structure of the final report: