Human-Computer Interaction
20% of your final project grade
Assignment #2
Assigned: Wednesday 10/1/2008
Part A: Proposal Due (60 points): 2 PM Thursday, 10/23/2008
Part B: Interface Due (40 points): 2 PM Friday, 11/7/2008
GREEN - Undergraduate requirements
Part A (60
points)
Write a proposal for your final project 3 pages - 12 point font, single space, 1” margins)
I. Background research - 30 points
Write a description of the topic you are addressing, including:
1. Describe the interface problem (1 paragraph) (5 points)
Grading Criteria: clearly stating the issue w/ existing interfaces (give more detail than ‘hard for user to navigate’, etc. Identify exactly why the problem exists and the role of the interface)
2. Motivate why this topic is important (1 paragraph) (5 points)
Grading Criteria: scope of the issue and your motivation that the interface is the hindrance
3. Integrate (UG: 2, G: 3)
scientific literature references (20 points) that support your choice of
topic. The references should explain deficiencies or considerations in
existing interfaces. This means technical conferences/journals (e.g.
SIGCHI,
Grading Criteria: quality of papers, depth of argument of relevance and inspiration for your design
II. Define project - 30 points
A. Find A Client (15)
Who would benefit from your work? (5 points)
Identify their issues with the interface (get at least UG: 1 of, G: 2 of): (10 points)
· 3 personal quotes from clients
· cite 2 papers [these papers are not the same as above, and instead can be non-scientific in nature, e.g. a newspaper article on the difficulty for the elderly to use voting machines]
· do a focus group of at least 10 people from the population [doing so earns you a bonus 10 points])
Grading Criteria: your ability to obtain supporting evidence (quotas, papers, focus group) (5 points), your analysis of what the clients are saying about the interface (5 points)
You should turn in as an appendix to your project: (not part of the 3 pages), interviews with the clients, transcript of the focus group
B. Your Proposed Interface Design (15)
· Describe your design (5 points)
· Discuss how the lit references from the first part are related to your approach and explain (10 points)
o How you are leveraging their findings
Grading Criteria: interface redesign rationale, integration of cited papers
Part
B. Build Interface (40 points)
A. Demo the new interface (30 points) <- 5
minute presentation to TA and myself
Grading Criteria: completeness (20 points), proper usage of
guidelines/principles (10 points)
B. State issues your interface is addressing and
how it is addressing the issue (10 points)
I expect the scope of building an interface to be larger for graduate
students. I anticipate building an
interface to take about 20 hours for an undergraduate, 30 hours for a graduate
student.
You must build a new interface, not simply move things around in an old
interface.
IRB and consent forms will be done in the next assignment
Finding papers - The best way to find papers are:
1. Google online
for conference papers at the major conferences, SIGCHI, UIST, SIGGRAPH, I3D,
2. Look at the each chapter's reference list
3. Look at similar related papers and look at their reference list. Google on them
Issue Selection Questions:
Overall Approach:
1) identify a client population (be very specific... not just novices, but
novices at email who are unfamiliar with any email client)
2) identify what the problem is w/ the existing interface (only choose one
thing, and be specific again... not just 'it is confusing')
3) read papers to identify other prior approaches
4) integrate those ideas into a proposed solution
What makes a good issue? Something you are passionate about!
Possible Projects:
Ex. Think of friends with disabilities and help them address a daily activity with which they currently have problems. (Create your own interface)
Ex. Designing voting devices for the elderly (Create your own interface)
Ex. Evaluate spoken words vs. tones for PDA navigation (Evaluate interface)
Ex. Design a hands-free interface for web browsing (Create your own interface)
Ex. Create an art project that has projector based fish swimming around a person feed from a webcam (Create your own interface)
Ex. Explore the task performance enhancement by providing multimodal vs. unimodal data (Evaluate interface)
Hardware Questions:
What happens if I need really expensive hardware? Let's chat. We'll find a good compromise. The projects built here can be thought of as prototypes. But do consider using a variety of interesting devices including:
· PDAs
· Cellphones
· Webcams
· Projectors
· Audio (spatialized)
· 3D Graphics
· Virtual people
· Engineering your own
There are free libraries available for:
· Speech Recognition
· 3D Graphics
· 3D Audio
· PDA connectivity
· Webcams (you should probably already have had a course in image processing)