Human-Computer Interaction
CMSC 828S
Fall 2002
Prof. François Guimbretière (sec. 0101)
Grad Project
Proposal Due Oct 10, 2002
Due Dec 10, 2002

Students registered for CMSC 828S need to do this project in addition to the regular class projects.  There are a few options for this project as described below.  You have the choice of doing an implementation project, an empirical study, or writing a research paper.  You have the choice of doing the project by yourself, or with one other student.  Your goal for the implementation and empirical study projects should be to write a paper suitable for submitting to a conference.

You must write a one page proposal for your research topic plus references to at least 5 of the papers you will read that relate to this project, and hand that in October 10, 2001 (worth 10% of project grade).  Feel free to talk with me in advance to discuss research topics.

Implementation Projects

These projects are primarily to implement an interactive system.

• Implement PhotoMesa for a PalmOS device - Ben Bederson has been building a zoomable image browser for desktops and PDA (Windows based) called PhotoMesa (see http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa), and would like to see a PalmOS version. The requirements are to implement the software, perform a simple usability study, and write a short paper describing what you built, and what the results of the study are.
• We will soon receive a high resolution IBM display (3800x2400) and it would be interesting to use it to view satellite imagery. Using the image web server library, implement an image browser on the IBM display. The requirements are to specify needs, implement the software, perform a simple usability study, and write a short paper describing what you built, and what the results of the study are.
• Recent research papers [Accot, Winograd] proposed that while most interface are point-and-click, one could design an interface based on crossing 1D features on the screen. Such an interface will be well suited for pen based system. Design a simple application (text editor, photo editor, drawing program) which interface does not use menus or buttons but instead, crossing widgets. The requirements are to specify needs, implement the software, perform a simple usability study, and write a short paper describing what you built, and what the results of the study are.

Empirical Study

These projects are primarily to design, instrument, and run a user study.

• Scrolling is a very important part of current user interface. At the last CHI, a paper [Hinckley] presented new finding on users behavior while scrolling. Using this study as a starting point, design a new study showing how combining zooming and scrolling [Igarashi] might help user go through large documents.
• We will soon be starting the interactive digital table project. One of the key goal of this project is to design a user interface as easy to use as paper. Design and run an ethnographic study showing how people are handling paper during meetings. Key questions will include: What kind of documents do people bring to meetings? How do they annotate them during meetings? How do people interact while working together on a document? How do they move paper around?  What happen to the pieces of paper at the end of the meeting? 

Research Paper

The goal is to create a group website similar in style to the ones produced by previous CMSC 828S classes taught by Ben Shneiderman (see http://www.otal.umd.edu/uupractice/ )  It will be up to all of the students that pursue this to design and build the website.  There are several links to excellent web resources about work in HCI at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~bederson/classes/cmsc434/links.htm .  80% of your grade will be based on your writing, and all students will receive the same grade on the design of the website worth 10%.  The remaining 10% will go towards the proposal due on October 10th.  Here are some suggested topics, although you can suggest others:

• Mixing computers and paper.  What are the issues and state of the art?
• Interacting with large interactive surface. What are the issues and the state of the art?
• Interacting with computers while being visually impaired. What are the issues and the state of the art?
• Digital voting systems. What are the issues and the state of the art?

Your Project

Pick your own project and propose it to me.  It should be research oriented, and go beyond a "traditional" interface of the kind that we are working on in the other class projects.  If you pick your own project, please discuss it with me before you hand in your proposal on October 10th.