Assignment

• (Part 1/4) A project proposal: due on 2/26/26.
• (Part 2/4) A project progress report due on 4/9/26.
• (Part 3/4) A project demo: to be scheduled with your TA for a date on or before 5/1/26.
• (Part (2&3)/4) An optional project presentation: The project progress report and demo can be combined into an optional (formal) project presentation to be scheduled for the last 4-5 weeks of classes, with the presentation slides and demo material due the day before your scheduled presentation (last presentation date 4/27/26 for on-campus students and 5/4/26 for distance/online students).
• (Part 4/4) A final project report: due on 5/5/26.

The details are given below.

Acceptable Project Types

• Usability requirements through ethnographic observations, user interviews/discussion-groups, or other requirement gathering techniques, typically directly involving the target users.
• UI Design, which may include the following elements:
  • Selection of an appropriate design framework, such as user-centered design (UCD), participatory design (PD), or other UI design frameworks/methodologies and related techniques, with justification,
  • Initial UI design
  • follow-up re-design (evaluation-and-refinement iterations),
  • Choose appropriate interaction styles and make detailed design decisions, with justification.
• Implementation of the UI design.
  (Warning: Don't get bogged down on this! The focus of your project should be on UI design and evaluation, not implementation.)
• UX Evaluation, which can be performed on the following using different evaluation techniques:
  • design prototypes, and/or implementation, (or even UI requirements), can be evaluated,
  • expert reviews, usability testing, or other appropriate usability evaluation techniques can be applied.
  • Pay particular attention to your concrete, and ideally some quantitative, usability metrics to be used for evaluation.
  • Identification of problems for further usability improvement and/or for process improvement.
• Followup improvement cycles as a second (and third, and ...) iteration of some of the above steps.
  As stated above, the minimal requirement is a complete design-evaluation-redesign cycle or evaluation-redesign-reevaluation cycle (1.5 iterations of the UI/UX process; slightly different requirements for 5312 students -- see below).

• It's generally a good idea to consider multiple design techniques, interaction styles, and evaluation methods and actually use a couple from each category in your project to get a hands-on feeling/experience of how different techniques, styles and methods work in practical applications.
• Try to be as specific as possible in each of your activities. For example, when you evaluate the usability of your system, consider:
  • What is/are your specific evaluation technique(s)?
  • How about other techniques that might be appropriate?
  • What's the basis for comparison (baseline)?
  • What usability metrics are to be used?
  • How to collection the data needed?
• Most importantly, it's a project where you design/(possible implement)/evaluate ("do") UI for some system and report the activities/results/findings/etc. Concrete design artifacts need to be produced, and/or quantitative (and qualitative) evaluation results need to obtained. Therefore, a general discussion of or even a comprehensive survey about UI/UX and related topics and activities will not be an acceptable project.

Individual vs. Group Projects:

• For an individual project focusing on design, such as designing a new system and its UI, design prototypes of different levels of details are expected, and supported by the accompanying evaluation activities that lead to the subsequent refinements/modifications of the initial design. In addition, at least some evaluation needs to be performed to demonstrate its usability.
• For an individual project focusing on evaluation, such as evaluating an existing system, be sure to include some objective/quantitative usability metrics and related data (and analysis of the data). For example, you should not only relying on general survey feedback and/or subjective rating of the UI from expert reviews. Detailed data from usability testing and/or actual usage measurement data that can be used to quantify usability would be appropriate here. In addition, you still need to have some design elements, such as changed and/or enhanced I.S. with justification, design sketches of an improved/modified system/UI, etc. based on your evaluation results.

Difference in 7312 and 5312 projects:

• For 5312: The minimal requirement is to go through one design-evaluation, or evaluation-design cycle, -- this is the requirement for undergraduate students enrolled in CS 5312.
• For 7312: It would be an excellent idea to at least attempt part of a 2nd cycle, such as design/evaluation/redesign, or evaluation/redesign/re-evaluation (start with evaluation of the original design, and end with the evaluation of the modified/improved design). Of course, I don't expect a full re-design, or a full re-evaluation. Graduate students enrolled in CS 7312 are required to included such 2nd round of re-design or re-evaluation activities in their projects, in addition to the first design/evaluation or evaluation/re-design cycle required for all students above.

Project Proposal (Project Part 1/4)

Your project proposal should be around 3-4 double spaced pages (single column) in length, and should include the following information:

• an informative title (e.g., "UI Design and Usability Testing of XYZ", or "Usability Evaluation and Redesign of XYZ", but not just the generic title like "CS 5/7312 Project", or "XYZ UI"),
• a one-paragraph abstract (at the beginning of the proposal) to give a high-level overview or executive summary of your project (most importantly, are you going to start with design for a new system, or evaluation of an existing system? Not just talking about the system or its UI.),
• introduction: clearly identify the problem that you are going to address (typically limited to one or two paragraphs),
• brief background information (no more than 1/2 to 1 page),
• (the most important part of your proposal!) a well-justified solution strategy you intend to use, particularly: which design/evaluation techniques? which interaction styles? etc., and why?),
• expected results (and data to be collected, particularly to calculate usability metrics for UI evaluation) and related analysis to be performed,
• followup actions,
• a rough schedule,

• Please provide information regarding each team member's roles and responsibilities.
• The amount of work proposed for a group project should be appropriate (proportionally more) for the group size. As stated earlier, both the design and evaluation aspects must be covered with significant amount of corresponding activities/results for BOTH. As a general rule of thumb, if something can be comfortably done by a single student, it is not suitable as a group project.
• You only need to submit one proposal, one progress report, and one final report for the project by one team member, with the other(s) submitting a note or a link giving information about who is the submitter of the team. (No duplicate submission all team members, please.) The proposal and report must follow the same instruction as the individual projects.

Please keep in mind that by the time you submit your project proposal, we have only covered less than half of the class material, although an overview of the whole course is given at the beginning of the semester. Therefore, you may make certain modifications to what you proposed later on, but the basic framework, scope, and direction should remain fairly stable.

I'll provide written feedback to your submitted proposals. You need to address the issues I raised in your final project report. However, in most of the cases, you do NOT need to submit a revised proposal, unless I specifically ask you to do so. (I.e., in the rare case that your proposal is "unacceptable", I'll explicitly ask you to re-do/re-submit a revised proposal.)

Progress Report (Project Part 2/4)

• Your progress report should be around 3-4 double spaced pages in length, or about 6-8 slides in presentation slide format.
• A brief summary of what you proposed earlier should be included, 1/2 to 1 page.
• Focus: progress so far, post-proposal stage, including design framework/methods followed, I.S. selected (for design) or identified (for evaluation), data collected from ethnographic observations/surveyors/execution logs/etc., design (prototypes) constructed, usability testing and/or other evaluation activities performed, result analysis, etc.
• What remain to be done (progress vs plan/proposal), and when.

Project Demo (Project Part 3/4)

Be prepared to answer questions from your TA and show project related material/documentation/live-testing/etc., such as:

• the existing system and its UI,
• (re-)design sketches and/or prototypes,
• observation notes and/or data sheets from UT,
• session notes and/or rating score sheets from ER,
• survey form (with actual survey questions) and response data from user survey,
• detailed setup of design studio/facilities or evaluation activities (e.g., UT lab, survey tool/collection),
• observation notes from EO,
• raw data from in-field measurement, etc.

A sign up sheet will be available a week or so before the demo period starts.

(Optional) Project Presentation (Project Parts (2&3)/4)

The primary purpose of the presentation is to share the results, findings, lessons learned with the rest of the class, and also to receive feedback from the instructor and the class. I'll also provide some brief feedback to your project verbally (live feedback), and may followup with some additional written feedback, so that you can make some adjustments to your project before submission of the final report.

Project Report (Project Part 4/4)

The report should clearly and comprehensively states the background, problem, strategy, activities, results, result analysis, lessons learned, followup actions, and a high level summary (and an abstract at the beginning). The report should include an informative title and a 1-paragraph abstract, followed by individual sections and possibly references and/or appendix. Each section should be clearly marked, preferably using numbered section headings (see, for example, the papers P1-P3 from our research group at SMU available on Canvas/"Files"). Additional material, such as graphs, models, etc. produced, information sources and raw data, customer surveys, etc., can be included in the appendix and clearly marked as such (so it will not be counted towards your 20 or 25 page quota).

Several common mistakes to avoid:

• It is supposed to be a "report", not a set of "presentation slides". So, limit your use of lists/bullets, and put most of the material/discussions in paragraphs. Similarly, only figures and tables without corresponding discussions do not make a good report.
• Your project report must contain UI design/evaluation related technical information. In addition, you need to describe/discuss this information unless it is clearly self-explanatory.
• Important figures/tables should be in the report itself, not in the appendix, accompanied by relevant descriptions/discussions in the main text of the report. On the other hand, you shouldn't include large numbers of the graphs, models, etc. produced for the project in the report text itself. As I mentioned above, they can be included in the appendix, if you desire, together with other material, such as raw data, customer surveys, etc.