Final Project
Your final project is a four week assignment to be completed in three stages (proposal, development and testing, presentation). Proposals presentations will be 11/14 and 11/21 (class will be divided in half, check the schedule on the wiki) Final project presentations will be 12/12.
The final project should be a creative project that builds off of or is inspired by the concepts we’ve covered this semester. You should feel free to think non-traditionally, projects do not need to be screen-based and there is no requirement to use a particular programming language or machine learning model.
Final projects can be collaborations with anyone in any class. Final projects can be one part of a larger project integrated with a different class. Just be transparent about what you are doing.
Other notes:
- Keeping things simple and small in scope is a plus. If your project idea is a big one, consider documenting the larger idea but implementing just a small piece of it.
- Also think about making a final project for a small audience, even one single person like a family member or friend. . . or yourself. This can be a good way to focus your idea and design process. “Generalizing” the idea can come later (or maybe not at all.)
Proposal Guidelines
It’s up to you to determine how to best present your idea. Be prepared to present for a few minutes with visual aids. Show us your inspirations or make a prototype (even if it’s just on paper). At a minimum, prepare the following:
- Project title.
- One sentence description: Can you summarize your idea in one sentence? Stick to the facts – what are you planning to make?
- Project abstract: ~250 word description of your project.
- Inspiration: How did you become interested in this idea?
- Visual reference: Drawings, photos, artworks, texts, or other media that relate to your idea.
- Audience: Who are you making the project for? How do you expect your audience to interact with your piece? What will their experience be like?
- Challenges: What is your biggest technical and/or conceptual challenge you anticipate?
- Code sketches: This is not required but if you have sketches in progress share them as additional links for feedback.
Document the above elements in a blog post and selectively edit the material to present with slides. Link to your post and slides on the proposal wiki. Plan to present your idea in ~-3-4 minutes leaving about 5 minutes for discussion.
Guidelines for Giving Proposal Feedback
- Is the idea clear? What do you understand / not understand?
- Is the scope reasonable? Can it be done in such a short period of time?
- Any suggestions for relevant tutorials, examples, or other resources?
Project Development and Testing
Class time will be allocated for you to make progress on your project. Make a goal for yourself for the session. There will also be time to informally ask questions or have additional individual discussions about your project. Project Development and Testing details and schedule
Final Presentation and Documentation Guidelines
Final project presentations are Thursday, December 12th, please check the wiki page. In class presentations will be approximately 8 minutes each.
Please post your final project documentation to a web page (blog post is fine) and link next to your name on the final presentation wiki. This is due Monday, December 16.
Final Project presentations are demonstrations and do not require a slide deck, however, you might find slides useful to help you plan and structure your demo and discussion. Your documentation should come in written form (equivalent of 1-3 pages) as a blog post. It’s up to you to figure out how to best document your project, at a minimum, please include the following:
- Title
- Sketch link
- One sentence description
- Project summary (250-500 words)
- Inspiration: How did you become interested in this idea? Quotes, photographs, products, projects, people, music, political events, social ills, etc.
- Process: How did you make this? What did you struggle with? What were you able to implement easily and what was difficult?
- Audience/Context: Who is this for? How will people experience it? Is it interactive? Is it practical? Is it for fun? Is it emotional? Is it to provoke something?
- User testing: What was the result of user testing? How did you apply any feedback?
- Source code
- Code references: What examples, tutorials, references did you use to create the project? (You should cite the source of any code you use in code comments with the exception of examples specifically provided by me for the class.)
- Next steps: If you had more time to work on this, what would you do next?