First, develop a great product idea with a team partner. As you develop your idea, think about the customer’s point of view and consider the feasibility and novelty of your product. Next, present your idea with your team partner to the class. Finally, view other groups’ proposals and rank them (including your own) by which project you would prefer to work on. The 403 staff will use these rankings to organize project teams (taking into account project and team-member preferences).
You’ll be assigned to a random group of two students via canvas.
Name your PDF [project idea]_[last name]_[last name].pdf (you’ll submit this file as part of the next step).
(1) Upload your recorded presentation to youtube.com as an unlisted video (detailed instructions here). (2) Save your slidedeck as a PDF file named [project idea]_[last name]_[last name]_slides.pdf. (3) Zip your two PDF files (proposal document and slide deck) into a file named [project idea]_[last name]_[last name].zip. (4) Submit your zip archive to canvas and make a submission comment in canvas with the link to your youtube upload by 01/09 EOD.
First, write an abstract of at most 3 sentences that states the goal, approach, and technology of your project. Then, fill out a form that populates the project proposals spreadsheet, visible to the entire class.
Submit your project’s title, video link, and abstract, plus the names of both team members to this form by 01/09 EOD.
During section on Tuesday 01/10 (1:30-2:20), scan through the list of project ideas and abstracts in the project proposals spreadsheet, and choose and watch at least 5 project proposal videos. Optionally, reach out to other members of the class over Slack for clarifications and/or to self-organize into a group.
Finally, fill out and submit this form of project and team preferences by 01/10 5pm.
The 403 staff will use the results of the form to assign you to a project team. If you already have a team in mind, you’ll have an opportunity in the form to specify that (full instructions are in the form).
No. Your grade is not based upon whether your project is chosen (by other students or by the 403 staff) to be implemented. Rather, your grade is based on the quality of your materials and your presentation. We will be evaluating whether you have addressed the identified project elements, made reasonable judgments concerning them, and organized and presented your proposal well.
It is essential to clearly indicate the problem, and why it matters to potential users of your system. For example, how will the system change the way they perform some task? Too often, this most important bit is missing in proposals. Only after that is it worthwhile to say that the project will be possible (or even fun) to build.
No. Your ranking does not have to include your own proposal, if you are more excited about other teams’ ideas. Also, you can split up your proposal team and work with a different group for the class project.
We will aim for groups of 4-6 students per project. If a project proposal is particularly popular, it is possible that more than one group can work on the same project idea – with a different focus or technical approach.
Try to focus on important questions about the addressed problem and possible impacts of your solution rather than technical details of that solution: What is your product, at a high level? Whom is it for? What problem does it solve? What alternatives are available? Why is this project compelling and worth developing?
You should spend nearly as much time understanding what already exists as you do coming up with something new. For example, don’t propose to develop a web search engine without knowing that Google exists.
Clearly explain what differentiates your project from the alternatives. Differentiate the top-level objectives, target customers, scope, and technical approach of your product from existing, alternative products. Indicate what is novel about your proposed features. Don’t belabor features that are standard in existing packages.
Also, indicate how the proposed project poses interesting design (or other) challenges from a software engineering point of view.
Don’t dive into too many technical details in your project pitch. You can say a few words about the underlying technology, but your first priority should be to convince the staff and the class that the project is interesting and solves an important problem.
Remember that this delivery is the basis for the class to decide which products to develop and deliver this quarter.
Excellent question! Here are some tips:
Be specific, and give examples – whether you are explaining a problem or a solution.
Include mockups if you are proposing a system with a GUI.
Make your slides simple and readable. Make sure your fonts are large enough; there is sufficient contrast between the text and background color; and the slides are free of distracting design elements (such as background images).
Put the take-home points on the slides. As a rule of thumb, if something is important enough to be in your speaker notes, it probably should be explicit on the slide.
Use color effectively. Highlight the key points to draw the reader’s eye and indicate what really matters about the slide.