Students will work in teams of 4-5 people, 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.
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" with existing Web technologies
To connect project work with insights from the readings and discussions
Teams will choose a topic to research and generate ideas for a new social computing experience that either addresses a problem or explores a new opportunity. Project may seek to augment, improve or challenge an existing interaction, or may offer entirely new forms of social engagement through technology. Your team's concept must be designed for multiple users to interact, either synchronously or asynchronously. For inspiration, your team may choose one these current challenges in social computing, but feel free to propose others:
How might we address the problem of misinformation and false advertising in social media?
How might we motivate and organize people to produce new kinds of creative artifacts or to solve complex problems?
How might we create online communities that foster social well-being, equity, and inclusion?
How might we support interactions between online and in-person learners in a post-COVID world?
How might we create new opportunities for social interaction within large co-located audiences (eg., sports, concerts, town halls...)?
How might we help people understand, monitor, and curate their digital footprint?
How might we cultivate empathy, civility, and data-centered thinking for online deliberation?
or, choose your own...
Whatever you choose, strive to come up with something novel that does not already exist in the world. Your idea could become the next big social technology!
Start forming teams ASAP. You can choose your own teammates. Strive to create a team with a diverse mix of skills and expertise. How to find teammates:
Check the course dashboard ("FinalProjectTeams" tab) to see if any partial teams need additional members.
Post a topic or idea on the #winter2021-final-project-team-formation Slack channel
Attend studio sections in Week 5 for team-finding activities (Weds 1-2 and Weds 2-3; Zoom links in Dashboard)
Once you find a team, please list your names on the "FinalProjectTeams" tab on the course dashboard. Also, create a team folder here. Deadline: Weds Feb 3.
The goal of research is to gain insight on your topic before you start to generate specific ideas for new social computing technologies. Each team should conduct at least two of the methods listed below (e.g., survey and interviews) and then write a short summary report. Options for research:
Online interviews: Conduct virtual interviews with three people who are current members of an existing online community or who currently use a social computing technology related to your topic. To prepare for the interviews, teams should write a semi-structured interview guide with 5-10 open-ended questions, and be prepared to followup with additional questions as they arise during the interview. Interviews can be conducted on the phone or video chat. You may use the Zoom recording feature to collect video and transcripts of the interview, but you must obtain the person's permission first. Interview participants can be recruited through social media and other online communities, but please do not interview friends of your team.
Online survey: Prepare and deploy a survey using a standard survey creation tool like Google Forms or Survey Monkey. Be intentional about who and how you recruit participants to fill out the survey, especially if you are targeting a particular demographic or online community. You can send targeted messages to existing communities, ask your social network on Facebook, or even pay workers on a crowdsourcing site like Mechanical Turk. Keep the survey relatively short so that people can fill it out in 10-15 minutes. Aim to recruit at least 20 users so that you gain a range of perspectives. Again, just like the interviews, strive to recruit people that align with your topic and target audience. You will be assessed, in part, based on the authenticity and appropriateness of your survey respondents.
Online search and literature review: Many of the topics you are considering have already been the subject of academic research. Much can be learned by doing an extensive online search on academic papers (see Google Scholar and the ACM Digital Library), first-hand reports, or news articles that explain the challenge/topic and the key facts, considerations, and design principles. If you choose this method, the goal should be to go deep: read everything you can find about the topic. Pick up on additional language that can inform your queries and exhaust all search trails. Make sure to take extensive notes and capture your sources. When you synthesize your literature review in the summary report, make sure to accurately cite your sources.
Data science insights: If you have a strong data scientist on your team, you can choose to conduct a data science analysis to get insights from a particular dataset. You can find an existing dataset related to social media (this page has a great index of resources, for example). You may also build a web crawler to scrape data from a website, as long as it adheres to the platform's the terms of service. Once you have a dataset, make sure to articulate a set of questions/hypotheses to explore and include figure/charts/stats to support your insights in the report.
Your team can split up and conduct two of the four research approaches above. We expect each of these methods to take 4-8 hours and that the effort will be spread across the three weeks you have to complete this phase. As a rough work plan: Week 5 to decide on research methods and create a plan. Also, post a link to you plan on the course dashboard to get feedback. Week 6 to recruit, draft surveys/interview questions, and or find datasets. Week 7 to analyze results and/or synthesize literature. Week 8 to write and polish the research report due Feb 25.
Research Report. Work together as a team to draw out insights in a 2-4 page research report (11-pt or 12-pt font; single spacing; you may include photos, figures, or data tables). Make sure to include citations in the main text and a references section for all sources (including academic papers, websites, online communities for recruitment, etc.). The report should include:
Topic description, team name, and names of each teammate
Motivation for your team's topic (why it matters? how does it impact people?)
Summarize the key insights upfront (these should appear on Page 1)
For the two methods employed, describe the methodological details of your approach (e.g., how you recruited, where you searched, where you found your dataset, etc.), provide evidence of key findings including quotes, data tables/figures, images, etc as necessary to concretely illustrate what you learned, and make sure to include numbered citations to a reference section at the end.
Include one paragraph to describe how your team collaborated on the research and report, including the roles for each person.
Add a references section that includes links to websites, papers, any any other material you cite for your report. This section should follow a standard citation format (e.g, ACM reference format) and does not need to count as part of the 4-page limit.
(Optional) Add an appendix section for additional artifacts that do not fit inside the page limit (e.g., interview guides, survey questions, transcripts, links to data, etc.).
Research reports are due by class time on Feb 25. Post a link to your research reports to the team dashboard.
During your process of conducting research, hold an online brainstorming session with your team to generate as many ideas as you can think of. Try to think outside the box and come up with concepts that you have not seen before. Use a shared document of some kind (Google doc, Figma, Mural, etc.) so that each teammate can type ideas in parallel while also communicating verbally. Aim for quantity (e.g., 20+ ideas), but then work as a team to select your top 3-5 ideas. For your top ideas, do a competitive analysis to understand what technologies already exist in that space. If the exact solution already exists, drop it or pivot to a different idea.
There are two deadlines for this part. For the Feb 18 deadline, create a draft pitch deck with 2-3 ideas that you want feedback on from the professors and teaching staff. Note that it says 2-3 ideas: we want you to exhibit some parallel thinking here so that you have options how to move forward. Create a Google slide deck to pitch your ideas, make sure it's open for commenting, and post a link in the course dashboard. For each idea, include a set of slides that cover:
What's the challenge or opportunity? State why it's important.
What's your unique idea? Articulate why it's novel and show quick sketch.
What's been done in the space already? Make sure to search for competing ideas!
How will you prototype the idea? Describe what you will do to create a minimal viable prototype for your experience.
Prof. Dow, the teaching staff, and your peers will then provide feedback, opinions, and additional information to help your team narrow down your project to the best possible idea. After getting feedback, teams should meet and discuss their options, choose one ideas to advance into the prototyping phase, and then refine/polish the pitch deck around your best idea.
Final pitch slide decks are due by class time on Feb 25. Post a link to your pitch design to the team dashboard.
Teams will then develop their concepts for a novel social computing technology into a working prototype that can be evaluated during class in weeks 9 and 10. During these evaluation sessions, each team will demonstrate their idea and get feedback. Your team will need to develop a functional prototype, provide detailed instructions so that your peers can role-play the social experience during class, and create a survey to get feedback.
During the evaluation sessions, each team can ask fellow students to visit a URL for their prototype, to role play as different users, and to interact with each other through the prototype. Your team should gather usage information and user feedback through a survey that will help your team refine their concept. Teams may request to test their prototype with the whole class (~7o users) or a subset (in breakout rooms). In the course dashboard, indicate how many users you need so we can create an evaluation schedule based on needs and availability.
For the prototyping sessions in Weeks 9-10, teams should prepare the following:
Instructions for users: Write clear instructions for peers. This should include a description of the social context, a script for the specific role(s) you want someone to play (to have different roles, simply have different sets of instructions), and any instructions for how to use the prototype (i.e., where should they click or write? how should they interact?). You will ask your peers to read this before trying your prototype in class, so make sure to keep your instructions super clear and concise. Post a URL for the instructions in the course dashboard.
Functional prototype: Create a working prototype that can be tested through a coordinate role play with peers. See notes below about technology for the functional prototype. Post the URL for your prototype in your instructions for users.
Evaluation plan: Write a list of evaluation questions. What do you want to learn about your novel social experience? What indicators might tell you if this could be successful? What kind of emergent behavior do you expect/hope to see? What kind of feedback do you want? This internal team document will help you prepare for feedback after you deploy the prototype.
Feedback survey: After demoing and testing your prototype, ask your fellow students to fill out a short survey to evaluate your prototype. This might include both open-ended qualitative questions and quantitative rating question. If time allows, you may lead a short focus group discussion about your prototype, but do this only after students fill out the feedback survey (so that you get everyone's independent feedback first). Post the URL for your feedback survey in your instructions for users.
As for technology for the functional prototype, there are no specific requirements beyond the constraints of the assignment (creates a novel social interaction for at least 3 users). Your projects can be built from scratch, implemented in a Web framework like Meteor, or as a mash-up of existing technologies (such as Google docs/sheets/forms). Be strategic about this given the talents on your team: you may want to, for example, create a preliminary prototype in Google sheets and then transition to a more elaborate prototype. You will not be graded on your dev skills or visual design skills, but rather on your team's ability to show potential for a new kind of social computing experience.
NOTE: Your working prototype must be testable by multiple peers simultaneously. This should NOT just be a Figma walk through with static screens that individuals can navigate. Create something that gives a sense for the full social experience, including the interactions with other people. That means your peers in class should be able to exchange information through the prototype. So Figma won't suffice. Think more along the lines of a Google Sheet mashup.
To support this, we have created the following prototypes. These are not novel by any means, but intended to give you a sense of what's possible with Google sheets (with conditional formatting, and scripting) and Meteor for real-time browser-to-browser interaction. Example prototypes:
Social todo list. Allows multiple people to add and check off todo list items.
Link to prototype in Google Sheets (demonstrates conditional formatting)
Link to prototype in Meteor (demonstrates simple browser updating)
Chat for team formation. Collects info from students, and emails links to chat rooms.
Link to project folder (open the Responses sheet to see scripting, launching the script via an object, and email functionality)
Brainstorming in large groups. Allows a large group to generate ideas for a prompt and then upvote the ideas they like the most.
Link to prototype in Meteor (demonstrates login, text input by many users, and upvoting/sorting)
Social engagement. Allows people to upvote, downvote, send messages and geolocate like Instagram does.
Extra resources:
Your team will be assigned an evaluation slot for week 9 or 10. Team deliverables (user instructions, prototype, and feedback survey) will be due the day you get assigned. After your evaluation session, your team should review the feedback, iterate on your prototype, and present everything as part of your final presentation.
Teams will summarize their prototypes and evaluations in their final presentation and via an online portfolio piece due on March 18 (11:30-2:30). The goal should be to describe the social scenario, summarize the motivation for your concept, illustrate your prototype, and discuss what you learned through your evaluation.
For the final presentation on March 18, your team slides should:
Include all team members' names on the first and last slide
Describe the social setting (borrow from the Pitch and Research Report)
Motivate your problem/opportunity
Illustrate the prototype(s) with screenshots or videos
Describe how your team conducted each evaluation session
Draw out key lessons learned from the evaluation. This should include both what people did (behavioral) and what people said (opinions). Include quotes, images, videos from potential users to help provide context for your evaluation. Describe how you iterated your prototype after getting feedback in week 9 or 10.
Reflect on what prototyping revealed about the social structures and complexities related to the chosen social setting.
Include as many "extra" slides as you want to show your work/progress throughout the project. You won't have time to share this on March 18, but we will review this when doing the final grading.
For the online portfolio piece, also due on March 18, create a landing page for your project. This webpage can also serve as a portfolio for team members when they go off to find jobs. The online portfolio piece should cover everything from the presentation (see list above), but in more detail. Here's where your team is encouraged to create visual design prototypes (e.g., Figma screens) to really polish the look and feel of your concept. Include in-depth descriptions and reflections on what you did and why, what you learned, and give a brief outline of the overall process, and contributions made by each team member (e.g., Susan did about half of the back-end coding, Joe designed the UI, Jim wrote the study protocol, Sally prepared the online portfolio). You can build this in a service like Wordpress, Google Sites, or Wix. Your landing page should include imagery that conveys your prototype's concept. You can also link to your slides from the landing page.
Good examples of final presentations and online portfolios. Look in the project folders for examples of research reports, idea pitches, and prototypes:
"RealTalk" (Fall 2019): final slides; portfolio page; project folder
"GoldDigger" (Fall 2019): final slides; portfolio page; project folder
"Traffic Jam" (Fall 2019): final sides; portfolio page; project folder
"PixelPerfect" (Spring 2018): final slides; portfolio page; project folder
"Frequent Fliers" (Spring 2018): final slides; project folder
Final deliverables are broken out across four deadlines:
Week 4: Final project released on website
Week 5: Find teams and work on a research plan (post URL to course dashboard)
Week 6-8: Conduct research, generate ideas, draft a pitch deck, write a research report
Draft of pitch deck (post URL to course dashboard by Feb 18)
Final pitch deck (post link to course dashboard by Feb 25)
Final research report (post link to course dashboard by Feb 25)
Week 9-10: Evaluate prototypes during lecture (Due by class time on Mar 2, 4, 9 or 11)
Pick a time slot for your team's prototyping session and specify this in the "PrototypingSlots" tab (do this by Feb 25).
Post your team's evaluation plan for feedback (do this 3 days before your assigned eval slot).
Post instructions for users in the course dashboard (due before class on the day of your assigned eval slot).
Week 11: Create final presentations and online portfolio (Due by 11:30 on Mar 18)
Be ready to present your final presentation in class (max length 7 minutes; prerecorded talks allowed).
Turn in your final slide deck as a PDF (include a link to your online portfolio) on Canvas (only the team leader needs to post this).
Your final PDF should include external links to your team's folder, your prototype, and your online portfolio piece.
Make sure to organize and include all interim versions and process documentation in your team's final project folder.
Complete a team peer evaluation by midnight on Mar 18.
Final project grades will be assessed according to the following breakdown (which represents 40% of the course grade). Team peer assessments may affect individual grades (up or down) by as much as 10%. At the end of the project, we will ask for feedback on your contributions from your teammates. We suggest you keep a work log with dates, time spent, and what you did. This will help you document your work.
Research reports (30%)
Does the research report meet the basic requirements outlined above?
Did the team conduct extensive research on their topic / social setting?
Do the interviews/survey/lit review/data science contribute to a deeper understanding of the social setting?
Does the team effectively summarize the field research and identify a key challenge or opportunity?
Pitch decks (draft and final) (10%)
Do the slides cover all the aspects in the description above?
Are the concepts novel in some way?
Is the presentation clear, engaging and concise?
Does the team conduct an extensive competitive analysis, and explain how their idea is novel?
Does the team effectively refine their final pitch after getting feedback on their draft ideas?
Prototypes and evaluation (30%)
Does the team meet the basic requirements for prototyping and evaluation specified above?
Does the team present a visual story that frames the context for the prototype? (~2 min in length. Should convey social setting and context and visually illustrate a vision for the social experience.)
Are the instructions for users clear and concise? Can users role-play the scenario effectively?
Is the prototype functional so that multiple users can interact and share information in some way?
Does the team iterate and improve the prototype after the informal feedback session?
Does the evaluation plan effectively describe key questions/concerns?
Does the formal feedback form/survey collect data to help address questions in the evaluation plan?
Final presentation (15%)
Does the presentation cover all the aspects in the description above?
Does the slide deck create a visual representation of the envisioned social computing experience (including social context and type of interaction)?
Is the presentation clear, engaging, and concise (under 7 minutes)?
Does the team provide evidence from the prototyping sessions and surveys that the final concept could succeed in the chosen social setting?
Final online portfolio piece (15%)
Does the online portfolio piece meet the basic requirements outlined above?
Does the online portfolio piece provide extensive details on everything (including their process and details not covered during the short final presentation)?
Does the online portfolio piece successfully motivate the idea for your team's concept and reflect deeply on whether this prototype would work in the social setting? (if it's not a good concept, that's ok too; your team just needs to say why.)
Does the online portfolio piece effectively describe what the team learned from evaluating their prototype?
Is the online portfolio piece well written? Does it have a narrative flow? Free from grammar and spelling errors?
Is the online portfolio piece visually appealing for a broader audience? Does it look professional and complete? Will future employers understand your idea within a short review of your team's portfolio piece (within 1-2 min)?