This document describes the capstone semester project for the course. Students should work on a project in teams of 3 or 4 people. Expectations will be adjusted according to group size.

The idea of the project is to take the knowledge and background that you are learning this semester about Information Visualization and put it to good use in a new, creative effort. For your project, you should choose one of the topics listed below.

1. Comparing Information Hierarchies - You should develop a visualization technique (or techniques)s and a system that will assist people in doing cognitive tasks involved in comparing two hierarchies of information. For more details on this topic, please see the 2003 IEEE Information Visualization Conference contest at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/iv03contest/.

2. Comparing sets of data - Consider two or more data sets made up of a potentially large number of items each with some overlap, that is, some items will appear in more than one set. Assume that each data item has multiple interesting variables of all the main types. Develop a visualization technique or techniques and a system that will allow viewers to observe the commonalities and differences across the sets, and to examine particular variables of data elements as well. The prototypical example for this problem is an examination of mutual funds and the individual stocks held therein.

No matter what topic you choose, I am expecting a high-quality project. In particular, I'm seeking creative projects showcasing interesting ideas. A good project should consist of visualization designs and a software artifact that implements the designs. Interaction is key in information visualization, and it is difficult to understand the interaction issues in your project without a running system. I am explicitly NOT expecting user testing and evaluation. Ideally, I would like your efforts to be innovative and to result in some form of potential publication.

You will have four main milestones or deliverables. First, you must form your team and settle on a topic. Second, you will submit a progress report about halfway through the term in which you will describe your efforts to that point. This report should be relatively short (3-5 pages), but it should be descriptive enough for us to provide you with some useful feedback. Third, you will make a final presentation about your project, and finally you will create a project write-up or article. Your project presentation should be professional and well prepared, and your final report should be of conference submission quality.

Important Milestones: