Students will work in teams of ~4 people within your assigned section, ideally with a range of skills and domain expertise. Each team will invent, prototype, and evaluate a novel social computing experience that is functional and can be "played" by multiple people within a specific setting. Teams should strive to create a final project that relates to the course readings and discussions, but they are free to work on anything within the constraints outlined below.
For inspiration, here are some current open challenges in social computing, but feel free to propose other challenges or novel ideas:
Design something that makes social comparison productive instead of corrosive — where seeing others' activity online helps rather than deflates.
Create a social experience where anonymity is granted selectively (by activity, by room, by time of day?) rather than as an all-or-nothing account setting.
Build an experience that deliberately mixes people who would never encounter each other, and makes that collision feel worthwhile.
Create a system that surfaces peripheral participation — lurking, reading, watching — as a legitimate and visible form of membership.
Prototype a collaboration where AI is a participant with a defined role and visible limits, and humans actively decide when to accept or overrule the AI.
Design a social experience for a physical co-located setting — a classroom, a bus stop, a dining hall — where the technology supports the social activity.
Create a system for handling conflict between members that neither escalates to authority nor leaves the harmed person to fend for themselves.
Build something that gets better as people leave — designed for turnover rather than growth.
or, choose your own... strive for novelty!
The strongest projects here will usually pick one prompt and narrow it to a specific setting and population, rather than trying to solve the general version.
To understand how iterative design methods can be adapted to prototype and evaluate social computing technologies
To envision and evaluate a concept for an open-ended design prompt
To prototype and test interactions that involve multiple people
To create a "mash-up" or "piggyback prototype" with existing Web technologies
To connect project work with insights from the readings and discussions
To collaborate effectively with a diversely skilled team
For this team project, you can choose your own teammates within your section. Strive to create a team with a diverse mix of skills and expertise. The final team project accounts for 50% of the total grade. Within that half, the grade will be broken down across four phases, for a total of 50 points.
P1: Find a Team and Pitch a Project Idea (5pts). Form a team by end of Week 2; pitches due at end of Week 4.
P2: Conduct Research and Develop the Idea (10pts). Due at end of Week 6.
P3: Build and Test Social Prototypes (20pts). Live demo and evaluation during Week 7, 8, and 10.
P4: Create an Online Portfolio and Presentation (15pts). Due Finals Week.