Course Project
Course Project
Project Overview
The major assignments in the course will be in the form of a project, and will distributed over the course of the semester as "Project Checkpoints". You will first design and implement a simple UI in the form of a web app. Throughout the semester, you will perform peer evaluations, identifying usability issues with the UI of apps built by other students in the course. Based on the reported usability issues you receive, you will then iteratively redesign and improve the usability of your web app to address these issues. Full details for each Project Checkpoint can be found in the Project Checkpoint descriptions below; the due dates are summarized in the course schedule.
What to Build?
You are given the freedom to build any type of web application that you would like for the semester project. However, there are some general guidelines that are important to follow:
- The project should be something the group can implement in two weeks. Because much of this project will be focused on evaluating and refining the UI, the premise of the app should be simple. Some successful projects in the past have been as short as 500 lines of code.
- It must be implemented as a web application and be usable by visiting a URL. Projects can be implemented entirely client-side, or with some back-end technologies, but the back-end should be kept to a minimum.
- We will primarily be evaluating your project based on the UI you create, not the elegance or sophistication of your implementation. Thus, we expect that the best projects will be those that involve a significant amount of user facing interactions.
- Pick something interesting and exciting! You and your group will be working on this project for the entirety of the semester, so pick something that you are genuinely interested in!
Project Collaboration
You are allowed to work on the Project collaboratively using one of two models:
- Work on and submit all Project Checkpoints independently.
- Collaborate from start to finish on all Project Checkpoints with at most two other students in SWE 632. You must submit one solution as a group for each Project Checkpoint. Additionally, each group member will separately submit a peer evaluation, describing the involvement of each group member (including themselves) in the Project Checkpoint assignment.
Note: You are NOT ALLOWED to include “guest names.” Every person listed as a collaborator must contribute. If someone is listed as a collaborator but did not contribute, all will be given a zero on the assignment and reported to the university honor committee.
Project Checkpoint Schedule and Assignment Instructions
All Project Checkpoints are due by the time class begins (7:20pm) on the due date indicated. See the full course schedule for additional information.
Assignment |
Due Date |
Assignment Description |
|---|---|---|
| Project Checkpoint 0: Proposal | September 1st | |
| Project Checkpoint 1: Initial Prototype | September 15th | |
| Project Checkpoint 2: Heuristic Evaluation | September 22nd | |
| Project Checkpoint 3: Interaction Design Iteration | September 29th | |
| Project Checkpoint 4: Think-aloud Usability Evaluation | October 20th | |
| Project Checkpoint 5: Interaction Design Iteration 2 | October 27th | |
| Project Checkpoint 6: Interaction Design Critique & Iteration | November 17th | |
| Project Checkpoint 7: Visual Design Critique & Iteration | November 24th | |
| Project Presentation | December 1st |