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CS 7260 S24

P1—Project pitch

Due 2024-02-20, 11:59pm Eastern 20pts

Follow all the instructions below. Please post any questions about this assignment on Slack.

Table of contents

Change log

  • N/A.

Aim of the assignment

In this first project assignment, you are required to come up with a project idea and pitch it to the Instructor and the rest of the class. The idea should be as fully-formed as possible so that you will receive more meaningful feedback early.

Background

What is the goal?

The primary goal of the course project is to engage you in visualization or graph drawing research with a prosocial goal. You will be expected to combine applied and basic research. In other words, you will be expected to pick a project that makes a contribution to an academic community as well as helping solve a real-world problem your users face.

Who will I work with?

You may collaborate with one other student inside the class as well as people outside the class. For example, you could work with several other students outside the course, researchers, or potential users. It should be explicit who did what part of your deliverables.

What will I do?

Your course projects count for half of your grade, and it takes a good deal of sustained work throughout the semester to be successful. Given the differentiated nature of the student projects (they will be making different types of research contributions) the grading for each will be necessarily tailored to the type of contribution. The final project grading will be similar to a peer review of an academic paper.

Depending on the research goal of the project, each student/group may:

  • Work with real datasets.
  • Complete a task analysis.
  • Conduct a fact-finding interview.
  • Develop novel algorithms.
  • Design visualization and interaction techniques.
  • Implement a visualization tool from scratch.
  • Design & conduct user studies.
  • Create demo videos, web pages, posters, or physical artifacts.

Each student/group will be expected to:

  • Solicit and incorporate feedback from the Instructor and potential users.
  • Communicate the final project and results through an in-class presentation and research paper. The paper should be an academic-level contribution suitable for a workshop submission.
  • Clearly credit who did what for the project, as well as any acknowledgements.

What feedback will I get?

Aside from the final project class presentation and report deadline, there will be several opportunities for the Instructor to provide feedback, starting with the initial pitch (this assignment). You are also welcome to message the Instructor on Slack to ask for guidance or make an appointment for a live discussion.

At the end of the course, the Instructor will consider which students to encourage to submit their work at academic venues (possibly with revisions/improvements beforehand).

Any other tips?

This project should be something you can be proud of! A potential publication, entry in your portfolio for employers, beginning of a research career…

Here are some other tips for what the Instructor is looking for:

  • Research that has both an academic contribution and real-world impact.
  • Ambitious but completed projects.
  • A mature solution that has gone through several iterations of improvement.
  • Suitable evaluations through usability tests, case studies, demonstrations, etc.
  • A clear and polished written report and presentation.

If you are not clear on how to write academic-style articles, please see the below examples and other examples from your literature review. You can also ask the Instructor. Some key points: readable figures, clear organization, concise and clear writing describing the problem/background literature/design/conclusions/future work.

Can I see some examples?

Here are some good examples from related graduate courses Prof. Dunne has taught:

CS 7250 Spring 2020:

CS 7250 Spring 2019:

CS 7260 Fall 2017:

Instructions

1. Identify an area of interest and your group

Alone or with one other student in our class (and any number of people outside of class), find an area to focus your exploration. Ideally this (your project) should be relevant to your research, career, or interests. Ensure that there are real challenges in this area that could be aided and/or solved with data visualization.

You will have time in-class on R 2024-02-08 to talk about ideas and potential groups, but we encourage you comment on other pitches in the #project-ideas channel on Slack throughout the next two weeks.

2. Identify your users

Find a user or user group relevant to your area of interest that you will help. It can be an individual, a group, or an organization. Any of the following users would be acceptable, but this list is non-exhaustive:

  • A non-profit organization.
  • An academic or industry researcher at any level including faculty, scientists, post-docs, or PhD students.
  • A government body.
  • A campus organization.
  • Members of the general public.
  • A for-profit company.

Search for academic literature and state-of-the-art tools related to the problems you’re trying to solve with your project.

  • Identify at least 4 good references.
  • Focus primarily on current, relevant, peer-reviewed literature from high-quality visualization research venues such as IEEE VIS (previously InfoVis, VAST, SciVis), TVCG, CHI, EuroVis, and CGF.
  • The work most relevant to your project may be from a different domain, but that would be transferable to visualization or graph drawing research.
  • Google Scholar is your friend, as is Northeastern’s library bookmarklet that lets you get access to most relevant paywalled articles.

4. Write your pitch

In under 600 words, write up your title, group members, users, related work, and description of your project idea. The 600 words is not a hard limit, just guidance on what is expected. Ensure that you cover each of the points above in sufficient detail that the Instructor and other students can understand what you want to do and provide feedback. Make sure to discuss the relevance of the related work in a narrative fashion, don’t just cite it. If there is additional background information that would be relevant, please include them. E.g., tools you’d use, sketches, images, examples of existing solutions. Hyperlinks to any relevant materials that would help us evaluate your pitch are highly encouraged.

5. Prepare a 12-minute presentation

Prepare a presentation to give in-class pitching your idea. Each student/group will have 12 minutes to present, followed by another 12 minutes of discussion. This presentation does not need to be submitted, just presented. You will present in a random order the Instructor generates.

Submission Instructions

Make a post to the #project-ideas channel on Slack with your pitch and present in class on R 2024-02-22.

Grading Notes

You will be graded on the quality, meaningfulness, and feasibility of your project idea and, to a lesser degree, your writing and presentation skills.

© 2023 Cody Dunne. Released under the CC BY-SA license.