Project Brainstorming

Hall of Fame/Shame

• I will do a few more examples next week.

• Next Friday, you will sign up for your turn.– Your slides are due to me by the class session

prior to your presentation.– Should use terms we will discuss from DOET

Context : In a men’s room.

What is this thing?

Context : In a men’s room.

Yes it is!

No it was.Learn to livewith change

Different men’s room/Same building

Different men’s room/Same building

Hall of Fame/Shame

• Why does the first bathroom belong in the Hall of Shame, while the second one belongs in the Hall of Fame?– Affordances?– Knowledge in the world– Constraints

Objectives for today

• Understand what makes a good project

• Get to know some of your classmates

• Brainstorm potential project ideas

Project logistics

• Just a reminder…– www.cs.uni.edu/~schafer/3120/project.htm

• ~65% of your grade• 3 to 5 members• Preferably no more than one “non programmer”• This is a main course activity and will last all

semester– September 4th– groups formed– September 11th – project proposal due; – …– December 11th– final presentation open house

What makes a good project?• Original concepts• Value for the end user• Appropriate boundaries• Concept over implementation• Scripting and mash-up technologies• Equal unfamiliarity

What makes a good project?• You should care about the idea• It must be primarily an interface problem

– Focus on the design and evaluation process– Minimal backend development (unless you’re already

doing it anyway)

• You must find at least two real users• The application must be task-centered

– users must have specific goals/tasks

Task-centered?Dr. Schafer is in charge of setting up the schedule for the

campus visit of a job candidate (Cole Kutz) on September 17th.

He schedules – time to take the candidate to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. – 3-4:30 PM for the candidate’s research talk.– A one hour block for a campus tour– A one hour block to meet with the Dean.

He contacts the other members of the department and allows them to schedule 30 minute meetings with the candidate for any time slot not yet taken and up to 3 people each to join meals.

He needs to maintain an active copy of the up-to-date schedule.

A few examples of “good” projects from the past

• Library “help ticket” system for IT

• Library reservation and check out system for technology

• Member database management system

• Election/voting management system for a student organization

A few examples of poorer projects from the past

• An apartment finder system

• A tool for linking up Xboxs online

• An MP3 Management system

• Mobile phone campus mapping app

A few examples of poorer projects from the past

• An apartment finder system

• A tool for linking up Xboxs online

• An MP3 Management system

• Mobile phone campus mapping app

• Two things that made these not as good– Lack of REAL users– The tasks were too restricted

A few candidate projects

• Note: no advantage in selecting one of these

Fantasy ____ball League Manager

• Help members playing fantasy sports manage their league.– Set up the teams in the league (commish)

– Make roster moves for upcoming games (owners)

– Enter stats from actual games (commish or stats keeper)

• Both Dr. Wallingford and I participate in different leagues. I suspect that you could easily find other participants.

Volunteer Scheduling System

• Helping the readers and the volunteer manager for IRIS indicate preferences and set a monthly schedule.– Volunteers sign up for ongoing “preferences”– Volunteers indicate “one off” conflicts– Coordinator sets base monthly schedule– Volunteers find dates that need more help– Potential to export to current calendar system

• Specific organization with a potential need

Previous Course Projects

• If you have taken a course in intelligent systems, databases, software engineering, etc. you have likely built a system with functionality and data but maybe one that isn’t very useful.

• Many of these could probably use a front end so that they can actually be used by real people! BUT, you have to be able to think about the real world users.

Notes on implementation

• Use the tool/environment of your choice

• Not hardcore UI programming– A prototyping tool such as Visual Basic or

Access is sometimes the right choice.– However, if this is a “working” program

(something I encourage), you might consider using Swing/Java or an environment with an IDE plugin depending on your environment.

Exercise (25 minutes total)• Get in groups based on the “face value” of

your card– Get to know each other (5 minutes)– Talk about project ideas (5 minutes).

• If you’ve got one, sell it

• Otherwise, brainstorm ideas

• REPEAT with card’s “suit” (but let’s split odds and evens) (10 minutes)

Next Steps

• Readings– Finish Design of Everyday Things

• Project preparation– See the next slide

• Next week– Pitch day (Monday)– How to work in groups, Final group selection?

Monday, August 31st

• Project Sales Pitches

• You will have:– ONE minute– TWO power point slide(s)

• Brief overview of your idea

• Brief introduction of yourself

What should be on your slides(s)

• Project Pitch– What is the problem, concept, or need that needs to be met?

– Who are the users?

– Why should your classmates be excited by this idea?

• Self introduction– What experiences/skills do you bring to the table?

– What expectations or constraints do you have

– Why should others be excited to work with you?

– Preferably a photo of you

Your slides

• Each student must create two slides that address these two issues.

• Use PPT or something easy to import.

• Each slide must contain your name somewhere on the slide

• They must be emailed to me by NOON on Monday, August 31st.– schafer@cs.uni.edu

Counts as class participation

• Was it informative?

• Was it interesting?