Projects

For COMP4501/COMP7501 you are required to work in groups of three or four to complete a semester-long project.

Project topics are listed below.

In the lecture for week 1, you will be asked to choose a topic and from this form a group. Please (by email) Dr Kathy Egea and Kim Eupene (Tutor) of the topic of your choice and your team members. YOu will be required to present your first team update on the project in week 2 - class on Thursday - the topic, your goals, plan of attack, and possibly identify issues that may need to be overcome. More than one team can chose from the list of topics below.

The final deliverable for the project will be negotiated with the project advisor. In most cases you will be expected to deliver an evaluated partial implementation of your idea. Your partial implementation should act as a ‘proof of concept’ which clearly explores the concepts and issues related to the project.

Steps

Through the semester you will be required to work through a five-step process to complete the project.

Step 1: Define project topic and establish focus

By the class for week 2 you will need to have clearly defined your project topic and the problem you are exploring within this domain. You should have a clearly defined focus and understand the people, activities and context of the project. (class presentation week 2)

Step 2: Background research

It is important to complete background research related to the project. You will need to understand other work in the area and how it applies to your project. (Literature review due in week 5)

Step 3: Design and evaluation of design ideas

You are required to produce initial design ideas related to the project. Your supervisor will support you in the development of design ideas. There are a range of interaction design techniques which you may find useful at this stage. (week 8). Evaluation process to be completed by week 9.

Step 4: Partial Implementation

You are required to revise your initial design and develop a partial implementation of the system. The partial implementation should allow target users to experience the basic functionality of the system. Your partial implementation should consider usability and design guidelines. (week 11 class). Evaluation process by week 12.

Step 5: Evaluation

The final step in the project is an evaluation of the partial implementation. You should evaluate your partial implementation to ensure that it meets the goals of the project. This evaluation should take a human-computer interaction perspective.

Assessment (please see course profile for details and weightings)

Literature Review (due Friday, 28 Aug 09 17:00 [week 5])

Please submit to ITEE online assignments as a pdf file; name your file by the project name and literature review

eg those in project 1 would name their file, project1_literature_review.pdf

Marksheet
Weekly updates (weeks 2, 8-12)

see course profile for Criteria & Marking

Project Seminar (week 12) - moved to week 13

Marksheet (individual mark) pdf format [8KB]

Project Report (week 13)

Project documentation - detailed description link pdf format [57KB]

Marks for the reflective essay - detailed description link pdf format [98KB]

Topics

Project 1

Collaboration Software

A twitter client for Small-Medium Enterprises (SME's)

With the recent advance of internet publishing tools like Twitter and Facebook within the general population, peer to peer communication has never been easier. Business has also been utilising these tools: to communicate directly with their customers, help with brand awareness and promoting their products over the internet. While big businesses have the resources and inhouse skills to use and maintain this online presence, small to medium enterprises are being left behind due to their lack of understanding in this space and lack of time to learn to understand these new systems.

This project aims to investigate, review, and design a Twitter client which is designed from the ground up to support these small-medium enterprises and help them connect with the "Twitterverse" community. The system needs to be able to visualise and explain how their presence fits into the large social community, and help guide them through the process of publishing content and maintaining relationships with their customers. This project is a combination of understanding the social networking space, effectively utilising instructional design, and using HCI / IxD techniques to design and prototype a Twitter client suited for SME's.

Please email Andrew Dekker at dekker@itee.uq.edu.au for further information on this project.

Students: Tammy Walsh, Michael O'Brien, Adam Fiden, James Jeffers

Project 2

Designing for Location Dependence

Locative media is an emerging new media movement that, through the use of mobile technology and location-based services, seeks to question the notions of space and place in our everyday world. This research is concerned with the design and development of playful interactive experiential systems that fit under the banner of locative media. These experiential systems seek to reveal, represent, embellish and occasionally subvert the nature of the location in which they are deployed. Generally located in an urban or suburban setting, these experiential systems encourage participants to explore their environment and in some cases contribute their own stories of the location to the work. An exploration of works within this area revealed a set of common design issues. From this, a methodological framework was designed to enabling designers to create well-considered experiential systems. Guidelines and dimensions are used to establish a strong foundation prior to 'experience-object' design, methods for analysing location, stakeholders and resources, and a structure for use in the design of the experiential system itself.

The project asks students to design a playful interactive locative experience for commencing students in the IT & Multimedia programs by applying the framework mentioned above. In applying the framework, students will need to consider the audience for whom they are designing, what technology will be appropriate for use in deploying & participating in the experience and the location in which they will be deploying the experience. Students will then be asked to evaluate the framework in terms of its relevance & usefulness in designing & implementing this particular style of experience.

Reference: for Lorna’s Paper submitted to on 2005 Digital Arts and Culture conference - Copenhagen, Denmark

Designing for Location Dependence can be found at her website: http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~lorna/papers/

Please email Lorna Macdonald (lorna@itee.uq.edu.au ) for enquiries on this project.

Students: Piscilla Otero, Alexandro Olivera, Stuart Mills, Nathan Arnold

Project 3

Software to teach introductory programming concepts to adult students with no prior knowledge of programming

There is a dearth of software available to teach basic programming concepts to students with no prior background in the art of programming. However, programming concepts are difficult to grasp for some first year first semester students. A similar problem occurs in basic algebra. Some students find the abstract nature of such mathematics very challenging. In ITEE, Dr Roger Duke has developed a number of applets to teach students some of these concepts which are used in schools nationally and internationally. His work builds on educational theory of Bruner who identified three worlds where learning might take place: the 'material', the 'imagined', and the 'symbolic'. Find examples of Roger's algebra tutorials at http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~rduke/eis.html and locate the MatchBox Algebra link.

Reference: Bruner, J. (1966). Towards a theory of instruction. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

This project will

understand the educational principles of EIS
explore the literature on tutorial for introductory programming
interview staff and students doing CSSE1001 to undercover basic issues in the learning of programming
review the website for the course CSSE1001 to identify key areas of the course in weeks 1 and 2.
propose designs of applets that can be used by students in CSSE1001 in the first two weeks of the course.

The project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr Roger Duke (rduke@itee.uq.edu.au), Dr. Peter Robinson (pjr@itee.uq.edu.au) and Dr Kathy Egea. This project requires empathy and professionalism.

Please email Roger Duke for enquiries.

Students: Bakhreza A Talip, Carina Dimaranan, Dean Knight

Project 4 (also named Project 7)

Web Site Evolution

This project is working with the international ODRL Initiative (http://odrl.net) who desire to revamp their web presence in 2010. The ODRL Initiative is a community-based network of people working towards an open rights language for the digital commons. It produces Specifications via Working Groups and Task Forces and holds annual events. It utilises its web site to capture the WG activities and archives of email groups as well as a promotional tool for the groups goals. The group is looking for a more interactive and engaging web site to help assist the WGs to produce better outcomes.

The project will require the students to:

Understand the Requirements for the redesign of the web site
Review existing Open Source platforms as candidates for the new site
Design new layout and service platform
Deploy a prototype system with the ODRL user community
Evaluate the effectiveness of the new system

The project will be conducted in collaboration with the ODRL Initiative Convener (Renato Iannella, renato@odrl.net)

Students: Leran Yang, Jing Wang, Evan Nguyen\, Joseph Tan, ~~Matthew Huang~~ (updated in week 6)

Project 5

Interface for Greenphone

Linux-based mobile phone, Qtopia Greenphone (Linux-based mobile phones) was a project initiated by Trolltech to stimulate open development of mobile phones and to serve as an industry catalyst for the open phone movement. Currently the user interface is customizable for users with good programming and Linux knowledge. The aim of this project is to develop a series of design alternatives and high level prototypes for a GUI type interface, such that the phone is able to be used by everyone.

This project requires student make a higher level library of interface objects. Students require good programming skills and more preferably have undertaken CSSE4003.

Dr. Adam Postula (adam@itee.uq.edu.au) will be the advisor for this project in collaboration with Dr Kathy Egea. For further enquiry please email Adam.

Students: cancelled.

Project 6

HCI Aspects of MyPyTutor

MyPyTutor is an experimental tutorial system for the Python programming language. There are two aspects to the system: an interface used by those learning Python to do tutorial problems; and interfaces for developers for constructing individual problems and for collecting problems into a tutorial (a collection of problems). An initial prototype has been built and a tutorial has been constructed.

This will be made available for use by students in CSSE1001. As yet, however, no significant thought has gone into HCI aspects of any of the interfaces. This project will therefore look at the system from a HCI point of view and recommend changes and enhancements that will improve the usability of the system for both students and problem/tutorial designers.

The project will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Peter Robinson (pjr@itee.uq.edu.au).

Students: Duane Edwards, David Belvedere, Julian Foley

Project 7 (old)

Using Ajax to enhance user experience

AJAX is an emerging technology that industry is addressing for user interaction.

References:

http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/essays/archives/000385.php;

http://south09.webdirections.org/program/design#using-ajax-to-enhance-user-experience

A local industry consultancy on user experience, Peak Usability (http://www.peakusability.com.au/) has been conducting limited testing of AJAX websites with mixed results. More research and user testing is required. The project would therefore involve:

· Identifying suspected test areas/problems and test planning/ experimental design
· Running test sessions
· Developing different prototypes using different AJAX techniques (may be good for IT/developer student who knows a bit about AJAX – XML and Javascript but if not, we could approach existing clients with AJAX sites and involve them).
· Understanding human online behaviour and expectations
· Understanding how AJAX technologies can enhance the user experience but also the issues.

Peak Usability (Wickham Tce) offers their usability labs for user testing with your potential users.

Tania Lang (Principle http://www.peakusability.com.au/about-us/our-team.html ) will be managing this project. Contact details: tania@peakusability.com.au

Students: cancelled due to withdrawal of student (week 4 update)

Project 8

Navigation models

This project explores menus from a user experience perspective, identifying which are most efficient and desirable .

The team at Peak Usability (http://www.peakusability.com.au) have their theories regarding the most efficient model for navigation based on some testing they have done but want more formal investigation and research.

Different navigation models may include:

single level vertical drop down menus
multi-level horizontal fly-out (cascading) menus
use of landing/index/navigation pages with in-page links
mega-drop-down navigation menus

The project requires students to plan a program of research and development to provide valuable insights to interaction design best practice. It would require relevant students to build prototypes using javascript.

Tania Lang (Principle http://www.peakusability.com.au/about-us/our-team.html ) will be managing this project. Contact details: tania@peakusability.com.au

Students:

project 8a: Jenny Spiers, Jacob Appleton, Dan Dawson

project 8b: Jason Marles, Chin Wai Ng, Jerry Ong, Jared Mallet

Project 9

Online senior behaviour – are the stereotypes still true?

Peak Usability ((http://www.peakusability.com.au) have been conducting research with online senior behaviour. They state: "

Many of our clients have ideas about how older people behave online although we are finding that sometimes, we have very advanced older users. Many seniors have been online for a while now and are gaining confidence in using the internet to service their lives. However, we find that some of our clients still have the stereotypical view of older Australians as very unsure of themselves on the internet, and unwilling to use the internet for research purposes.

It would be interesting to understand if there are sub-segments within the group of ‘older Australians’."

Research questions:

Does the stereotypical view of ‘older Australians’ still hold true?
What activities are popular amongst this segment, and which are yet to be fully explored?

This project requires a through literature review, design and development of interfaces and appropriate user testing to establish/verify patterns of behaviour.

Lyndall Plumb (Senior Consultant Usability Specialist at http://www.peakusability.com.au/about-us/our-team.html ) will be managing this project.

Contact details: lyndallp@peakusability.com.au

Students: nil

Project 10

How social media websites are evolving user behaviour

Users appear to be expecting more and more from websites and interface design. The team at Peak Usability suspect that social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace etc are largely responsible. It would be interesting to compare user behaviour on rich media websites for users with different age groups and users with different levels of experience with social media websites.

David Humphreys (Senior Consultant Usability Specialist at http://www.peakusability.com.au/about-us/our-team.html ) would be supervising this project.

Contact details: davidh@peakusability.com.au

Students: Nathna O'Obrien, Chris Bierbower, Luke Causevic