CMSC 498D - Spring 2007
Prof Guimbretière

Introduction to Rapid Prototyping Techniques

Final report (Due 05/16/07 at 12:30)

This is the final report for your project. In this report, you will present your final design, its evaluation and a discussion of your results. Your final report should be formatted in conference format and be no more than 10 pages long.

What to do

Built your final prototype

Taking into account what you learned while building your first prototype and the results of your preliminary evaluation, you should build your final prototype. As in the case of the first prototype, it is important to keep the following aspects in mind:

• Scope. You will have 3 weeks to build and test your prototype. It is extremely important that you do not attempt to build too complicated a prototype. Instead you should identify the key features that need to be implemented and focus on these features, leaving aside the bells and whistles for now. Of course if your first prototype was very successful you might consider adding new features;

• Reliability. You will use your prototype for a run of evaluation, so it is important that your system be stable enough for such an evaluation. For example if you think that your evaluation will take 30 min, your prototype has to be able to perform as expected for such amount of time;

Evaluation

Once you are done with your final prototype, you should evaluate it by running a small pilot experiment. For this last run of evaluation it is important to test a fully integrated prototype in a realistic context. You should evaluate your design first among the members of your group (to debug your design) then by asking another group in the class to play the role of your target population, then with member of your target population. As we have seen in class (see "Observing the User Experience" by Mike Kuniavsky for details), during such tests it is very important to avoid influencing users. In particular you should no "push" participant through the evaluation, but instead observe what they are doing and, in the event they get stuck, identify the problem they are facing. If something is not working as expected, remember to encourage participants by pointing out that this is not their fault, but it just means that the design that needs to be improved. As before, it is important to take notes during these pilots so that you will not forget details. It might be useful to videotape the interactions if the participants are OK with it;

For this part, you are asked to run a minimum of 4 pilots with participant from your target population. At least half of your participants should not have participated in previous pilot studies.

Deliverables

This is the final report for this project. Your deliverable should have the following parts:

·         An introduction (including the motivations),

·         A previous work section,

·         A description of your design, including annotated pictures and diagrams. The description should be such that another student in the class should be able to reproduce your design. You should be careful to justify your design decisions using previous work or the results of your early pilots;

·         A description of your final evaluation method (where it took place, what the setting was, what the task(s) to be performed were, how the participants were selected) and the results of the evaluation. You should be careful to justify your evaluation design decisions;

·         A discussion of the pros and cons of your design reflecting on what your learned during the project. This part should include an analysis of the real world validity of your results;

·         A future work section describing what the next steps in your research agenda will be;

·         A conclusion about your work.

A PDF version of your paper will be posted on the class web page.

Poster and demonstration

During the last day of class, we will hold a demonstration session. Your group is asked to be prepared to run a demo of your prototype during the class. You should also prepare a poster that will present the key aspects of your work including:

·         An introduction presenting the motivation of your work,

·         A short description of your prototype,

·         Your results,

·         Your conclusions.

We will follow the UIST guidelines for poster presentation. While it is possible to create a poster as a collection of slides, I strongly recommend creating a real poster (using PowerPoint for example).