Principles of User Interface Software

CS 4470/6456 Fall 2002

Outline

Project Overview

The purpose of the project is to give you the opportunity to explore some topic in UI software in more depth than permitted in lecture. You are asked to choose a topic related to one covered in class, perform an extended literature review of the topic area, propose and explore a development task in that topic area. Graduate students will be asked to participate in an additional panel discussions at the end of the semester on assigned topic themes. You can elect to perform this project as an individual or in a team of two people. It is possible that more than one team works on a related project topic. However, those teams must work separately on the project. You are to use the Class CoWeb to publish the various deliverables of your project. Each project team must create a separate page on the CoWeb that is the home for your project deliverables, described below.

Defining the topic

Due: October 21, 9:00 am

You need to first declare what your project will be about. You are asked to choose a project topic that relates to topics covered in lecture. The purpose of your project is to explore this topic in more depth, so you will be expected to begin with the information provided in lecture and explore the topic in more detail, looking for more information on the historical background as well as the current state of the art in that topic.

Reading list

Due: October 30, 9:00 am

One of the first important tasks in the project is to assemble a reading list of relevant literature. This literature is expected to come from major conferences and journal publications, and in some justified cases, authoritative Web sites. For this part of the project, you must provide a list of 10-20 references that will be the basis for your literature review. This list will be reviewed by the instructor and TA.

Literature review and implementation proposal

Due: November 8, 9:00 am

Your project team is to write a 2000-3000 word literature review that provides a summary of the historical background of your topic as well as outlines the current state of the art. It is important that you provide descriptions of the significant contributions of the work represented in your reading list. You should provide a bibliography and relevant citations within this review.

At the end of your literature review, you should provide a proposal for a development project that is motivated by your literature review. This development project can take many forms. The goal of the development project is that you gain some experience either using a tool developed by some other company or researcher that you reviewed or developing some tool yourself that others might use. You have complete freedom in choosing the development environment for this project. The only requirement is that you be able to fully describe that development environment and provide some way for your project to be demonstrated to the instructor and TA at the end of the project.

Implementation task

Due: November 25, 9:00 am

Provide a description of your development project here. You will need to provide a summary of the motivation and goals of the development task. You should provide a clear description of your development environment, including links to any toolkits that you used. Any source code that you develop should be provided as an attachment to your deliverable.

Panel Discussions

During the last week of the semester, we will have three separate panel discussions that will be run by the graduate students in the class. Each class will consist of one theme that will be debated by the student panelists. Each panel will consist of an appointed moderator and 4-6 panelists. The topics for the panels will be:
  1. The future of user interface software tools.
  2. The prospects for programming intelligence in the user interface.
  3. Programming environments for physical environments: A grand challenge?
Panelists will be assigned by the instructor and TA.

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