Project Description
The idea of the project is to take the knowledge about visualization
that you are gaining in the class and apply it to a real problem and
real data. You are free to choose whatever application and data you
like as long as the scope of the project is reasonable. I'm also providing
you with a list of possible projects
that you can pick from.
You will choose an application area and set of tasks and implement a
visualization technique or system of your own. You may use any existing
components or toolkits to help you build your system. The language and
platform is also up to you.
Overview
Group Size: 2-4 students.
Expectations will be adjusted according to group size.
Important dates:
- Apr 8 - Project meeting due
- Apr 11 - Project summary due
- Apr 28 - Full project proposal + Lo-Fi Prototyping due
- May 31 - Hi-Fi Prototype presentation
- Jun 21+23 - Final project presentations
- Jun 30 - Final report due
Project Types:
There are three types of possible projects: Technique projects,
System projects, and evaluation projects. The three types of projects may
be combined in some circumstances but please talk to us first.
-
Technique project: You will choose a visualization technique
and a number of approaches and compare the advantages and
disadvantages. You may use any existing components or toolkits
to help you build your system. The language and platform is also
up to you.
-
System project: The goal is to help solve a visualization
problem for a particular application by creating a visualization
system for the given problem. This could be a scientific task or
a visualization of your favorite data set to gain insight.
-
Evaluation project: You will evaluate the effectiveness of a given
visualization technique by running a study using a number of
participants. There are four parts to these types of projects: selecting
a techinque, desigining the study, running the study, and evaluating the
results. While, this is not as programming-heavy as the other project
types, designing and executing a study is not easy and there will be
significant work.
Software:
You may choose the software that gets the job done best or that you are
most comfortable with. A fantastic list of available software resources can
be found on Tamara's page.
For a technique project I am expecting a significant programming effort on
your part.
Marking
The project is worth 40% of your final grade.
Marking of the project will be broken down as follows:
20%:
Proposal
10% Content
10%: Written report
20%:
Update
60%: Final
10%: Presentation
35%: Content
15%: Written report
Milestones
M1: Project Summary (due Apr 11)
The project summary does not count for marks. It is the first iteration
of your proposal and a chance to get feedback on your proposal before
it is marked.
Meet with us in person after you
prepare your summary. If you do the summary and meet with us
before Mar 31 you will have more time to prepare your proposal. While it
might be ok to sign off on your project after only one meeting, it might
require several iterations. Hence, please do not wait until the last day
for talking with us and brainstorming together.
I'd also suggest to not worry about any software systems to use until you
have a clear understanding what visualization problem you are trying to
tackle. What are the requirements and what are the expected outcomes? What
user interaction will be required? Only after you have a clear
understanding of the visualization issues, only then go and figure out
which tools might be best suited to help you accomplish these set goals.
Sometimes no single tool will accomplish what you need and you either have
to pipeline different tools together or write custom code to extend a
particular tool.
Prepare a webpage with the following information and email us the link:
- Names and email addresses of the members of your group
- Description of the target application, dataset, users, and task(s).
- These descriptions should be detailed and specific. Give specific
examples of user goals and the information & interactions the
visualization tool must support in order to achieve those goals.
- Explain why these goals are hard to accomplish with existing
standard tools.
- Brief description of your proposed solution.
- At this stage just a short description and/or simple sketch is
fine. You will develop this more for the proposal.
- Expertise of the group members
- Your level of experience or knowledge of the application area
and the type of development / languages / toolkits you think
will be required. If you have no experience this is fine! This
section is to help me assess whether the scope of the project
is reasonable for your team.
M2: Proposal + Lo-Fi Prototyping - May 03
Presentation length: 15min (leave 3-5 minutes for questions)
(schedule)
Expand and revise your Project Summary webpage. Include all of the
information required for the Summary (you may update it or revise it)
plus:
- Expand on your proposed visualization solution.
- Provide detailed illustrations of what the interface will
look like and how the user will interact with it (e.g. think of a storyboard).
You may either draw these by hand or use a mockup tool of your choice. Create at least three different mockups and reason about their advantages and disadvantages.
- Present a scenario of use, using sketches and text to demonstrate
how the user accomplishes a specific task with your tool.
- The first step here is to make your tasks much more detailed and
specific. Create a fictitious user and describe a specific problem
they have.
- A scenario then spells out what a user would have to do and what
he or she would see step-by-step in performing a task using a
given system. The key distinction between a scenario and a task
is that a scenario is design-specific, in that it shows how a
task would be performed if you adopt a particular design, while
the task itself is design-independent: it's something the user
wants to do regardless of what design is chosen.
- Implementation details.
- Brief description of the language, platform, and any toolkit(s)
you plan to use, and reasons for these choices.
- Milestones that break down the work into smaller parts.
- Include a description of each project milestone with start / end
dates and who will be assigned to accomplish each milestone.
- These should be detailed enough that you know if the amount of work
you are proposing is reasonable.
- A list of references (books, papers, software tools), that you draw
upon.
You will present your proposal in class on Apr 28 or May 03. You may
either use your webpage or a separate format for your presentation.
Include some questions or discussion points in your presentation to
help you obtain useful feedback from the class.
M3: Hi-Fi Prototype presentations - May 31 + Jun 02
Presentation length: 15min (leave 3-5 minutes for questions)
(
schedule)
You will present the following in class on May 31 or June 01. Make sure this meeting
is structured and you have prepared for it, don't 'wing it'. You may
either use your webpage or a separate format for your presentation.
However, please update your website as well so that it also includes
your current status in the following:
- Very brief reminder of your problem
- Images showing your current visualization design
- Presentation of your hi-fidelity prototype
- Any changes to the original visualization design or work plan
- Progress so far
- Current major challenges or problems
Include some questions or discussion points in your presentation to
help you obtain useful feedback from the class. Also, please be mindful of the
presentation time and practice so that you stay in time.
M4: Final Presentations - Jun 21+23
Presentation length: 15min (leave 3-5 minutes for questions)
(
schedule)
Interested people from outside the class will be invited so you
should expect a few members of the audience who have never seen your
project idea. Give a complete description of your project, including
the problem, approach, results, and an analysis of the strengths
and weaknesses. Focus more on the results and analysis since most of
the audience will have seen your proposal and update. Demonstrate how
your software works through screen shots or a live demo. (If you choose
to do a live demo, make sure you have screen shots available as a
back-up in case something goes wrong.) Leave a bit of time at the end
for audience questions.
Also, please practice your presentation so that you stay in time.
M4: Final Report
Due date: Jun 30, Last day of class
Report format: PDF document
The final report should be a stand-alone document describing your
complete project. You should assume the reader has no prior knowledge
of your project and has not read your proposal. Include the following
information in your report:
- Motivation
- Background information about the problem, tasks, users, and data
- Related work
- Other visualization solutions to this problem or similar problems
- Any previous visualization ideas that you incorporated into your
solution
- Approach
- Description of your visualization design
- Reasons for your design choices
- Implementation
- Brief description of how the system was implemented
(toolkits, languages, platforms)
- Any serious implementation challenges you encountered
and how you handled them
- Results
- Scenario(s) of use, including screen shots of the system
being used
- Performance of the system
- Feedback from the evaluations about the design and
functionality of your tool.
- Discussion
- Strengths and weaknesses of your approach and implementation
- Lessons you learned
- References
Your report should include screen shots of your software that
demonstrate how it functions. There is no specific page limit so take
as much room as you need for images. Some of the above sections
will be much longer than others. (I would strongly advocate to write your
report using the
latex templates
used for the Vis conference.)
Projects from other courses
Several visualization courses from other schools have past projects
posted online.
Viewing these previous projects may give you some ideas or help you
determine what scope is reasonable.