Final Project

The final project is an open-ended project where you will build on what we’ve learned in this class to do a project of your choice.

Options

Undergraduates:

Extend your Assignment 3. Flesh out more of the prototype, add a second modality such as sonification, or build further revisions based on user test feedback.
Audit and remediate a live site. Run Assignment 2 at full scale on a real site of your choice rather than a practice one. Scope the audit to one flow of four to six screens, such as search through product page through cart through checkout, rather than the whole site. Even better, find a campus organization, student group, or community organization willing to receive the report, so the work will benefit a real client who will read the result. Talk to Jonathan to talk about potential community partners to reach out to.
Contribute to Olli or Umwelt. Talk to Jonathan about what would make a good first contribution.
Propose your own. Define your own project. Instructor approval is required, so start talking to Jonathan early about project ideas and scope if you want to go this route.

Graduate students:

Propose a project with a design component that is useful for your research. Talk to Jonathan for feedback on your idea.

Teams

Undergraduates will form teams of four to five and enter them in Canvas by October 28. Talk to your classmates before the deadline. Everyone on a team should have agreed to be on it, so do not add yourself to an existing team without asking its members first.

Grad students will work on their own or in small groups. Talk to me first if you’re forming a group.

Milestones

Milestone	Due
Teams entered in Canvas	October 28
Proposal	November 4
In-class check-in	November 11
Progress update	November 18
Presentations	November 30, December 2, December 4
Portfolio	Finals week

Proposal

If you are proposing your own project, write a pitch that answers these questions:

What is the problem?
How do you know this is a real problem disabled people experience? Draw on a team member’s own experience, published research, or something you observed in Assignments 1 through 3.
What are you proposing to build?
How will you build it? Include a task breakdown, a week-by-week plan, and how the work divides across the team.
How will you evaluate it?

Come talk to me before you submit.

Progress update

What did you accomplish, and who did what?
What went wrong that you had not anticipated?
Are you on plan? If not, what are you cutting?
What do you need from me?

Presentations

Groups will present in class or at the INFO Showcase.

Portfolio

Write the final deliverable as a design portfolio page (the kind of page you would show off on your professional website to a prospective employer).

Submit it one of two ways. Make a doc and upload it to Canvas. Or publish a public page on your own website and upload the URL.

With your permission, I will collect the public pages into a gallery on the class website as examples for future students. Tell me when you submit whether I can add your page to that gallery.

Your writeup should generally follow this structure:

State of the world

What is life like today for the people affected by this problem, without your project?
What solutions already exist, and where do they fall short?

Problem statement

What specific problem does your project solve, and for whom?
How do you know this is a real problem for those people? Point to a team member’s own experience, published research, or something you observed in Assignments 1 through 3.

How your project addresses the problem

What did you build, and how does it work? Include figures, screenshots, or a demo.
What did you test, and what did the results show?

Interesting design decisions

Pick two or three design decisions that mattered most. For each one, talk about the choice you made, the alternative you considered, and why you chose one over the other.

Key takeaways

What would you change if you kept working on this, and why?
For each team member individually: what did you learn, and what surprised you?

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