Project Steps 7 & 8:  Final Presentation and Product

It is the end of the semester and time to present what you have accomplished. You should be proud of what you have done and we want you to tell us why. The final presentation (project step 7) and final implementation with written report and code (project step 8) are tightly related and simultaneous, so they are assigned here together.

Final Presentation:

While we have some things we want you to cover in your presentation, the actual form is up to you. This is a chance to be creative, such as performing your scenario as a skit with props, showing a video of your user's actual environment, re-creating your empirical user testing, etc. Risk-taking will be rewarded.

The presentation must include:

• a working demonstration of your project. This should be scenario-based, not just a listing of features.
• some key usability results (step 6) and refinements made.
• claims analysis history.
• your user requirements and how well your project met those requirements.
• the most significant factors and events that shaped your design, and any factors that altered or refined user requirements along the way.

Since everyone in the audience has done more or less the same process during the semester, please avoid presentations that are of the form "first we did this, then we did that, and then we did this next thing".  Tell us only the most important things that shaped the final result. Reflections on what were mistakes that you would do differently are especially valuable.

Final presentations will occur during the last 2 weeks of class, immediately after Thanksgiving break, as shown on the Calendar.  The best way to bring your materials is to have the running demo and presentation on a laptop that can be plugged into a VGA projector cable.

Final Product:

We will be grading the final product based on your demonstration and your final report. For most teams, the demonstration during the final presentation will suffice for us to judge its quality.  However, we may ask some teams for an additional off-line demo after the presentation so that we can see it close up or if its full functionality could not be shown during the presentation.

Final Report:  The final report will be due on the last day of class, Dec 9.  The final report should include:

• an illustrated guide to your interface. This should include scenario(s) and claims analysis. Illustrate with screen shots, annotate with captions, arrows, boxes, etc. whatever graphical device that will make it clear how it is used.
• Indicate portions of your design that you were not able to implement fully, and a listing of what your future work would be if your were to continue the project.
• how did you respond to issues identified in the usability testing?
• your user requirements and how well your project met those requirements.
• the most significant factors and events that shaped your design, and any factors that altered or refined user requirements along the way.
• Reflections on what were mistakes that you would do differently if you could do the project again.
• A detailed list of credits describing what each team member did on the entire project.
• A ZIP of all relevant files (source code, libraries, executable, etc.) and attach as a CD or submit via Blackboard DropBox.

Notes on grading:  we will try to reconcile the wide variation in scope between projects. So if you took on a rather simple challenge with easy-to-meet requirements, you will need to demonstrate the thoroughness of your problem finding, robustness of your working final project, and convince us that your user testing shows the superiority of your idea. On the other hand, if you took on a very complex challenge with lots of details for which the implementation is equally complicated, we want to know why that was the right thing to do (but we may cut you a little slack if the implementation is not yet perfect).

FYI:  Your Portfolio: You should take great pride in your project and save it for your portfolio. The portfolio can be useful for job and graduate school applications or for reminding yourself of the elements of HCI. The easiest way to create a record of this project is to start with the illustration of the system that you include in your final report. Imagine that you would be sending it to your family to explain what you did in this class; so tell the shortest and simplest story about who the users are and what it does. If your family can understand it, then it probably is just about right for your portfolio.