P0: Project Proposal
(due Tue, September 20 before class)
The heart of this course is a semester-long project, in which you will work in teams to design and prototype a novel tangible user interface. Your project is expected to be creative and innovative.
You can choose the topic of your project from 3 project briefs:
1) Making Science Tangible
2) Unleashing Creativity
3) Reinventing Superheroes
Alternatively, you can choose to participate in the UIST Student Innovation Contest.The project you will present at the cotest will serve as your course project. Note that the final deadline for the contest is 10/17 while the deadline for the course project is 12/6. If you choose to participate in the contest, you will still be required to submit P0-P3 but you will have to submit them in earlier dates: P0 9/2, P1 9/13, P2 9/30, P3 10/14. The grading criteria for students that choose to participate in the contest are the same as for the rest of the class. Also note that the instructor cannot guarantee financial assistance for the conference travel. You should plan to apply to college travel support.
What to hand in: (by creating a Google Doc and sharing it with the instructor). Your proposal should include the following elements:
| Team members | List of your team members and a name for your team. |
| Problem | Describe the problem your project attempt to address. It should be a specific problem related to the problem described in the design brief you chose to focus on. |
| Users | What kind of users are expected to use the system? where will they use it? What are the characteristics (in terms of skills, age, etc.) of this user group? |
| Proposed solution | Describe using text and sketches your proposed solution (a general vision of how the proposed system will look and work). Highlight the tangible elements of your design. Why do you think a tangible approach is beneficial for addressing this problem? You are not commited to this solution yet (maybe after refining your design you will find out that a different approach will work better). |
| Related work | Review existing solutions that attempt to address a similar problem. Use the ACM digital library for searching related work. You can also use popular sites such as Wired, Engadget and Google. Explain how your proposed solution is different than existing solutions. Your related work review should include at least 5 exsiting solutions. |
In addition to submitting this proposal. Write a post in your blog that summerizes your proposal and explains why you chose the proposed approach.