HCI Project

Timeline

23 sept.-29 sept. 2024: Pair up with a partner in the course and notify the teachers on the project's pad
Before 25 oct. 2024: Have your proposal validated by the teachers
25 oct. 2024: Early presentation during the first project session: Problem + proposed solution
End dec. 2024: Have the prototypes and experimental plan ready (at the latest)
17 jan. 2025 midnight* at the latest: Send the report to the teachers
24 jan. 2025: Final defence

* If you submit the report after this time we will not be able to guarantee that we have read them by the time of your presentation. Given the limited time for presentations and questions, you risk that your time will be taken up by clarifying ambiguities that could have been addressed by the report. You will not receive a grade for this course until you have submitted your written report.

Guidelines

The objective of the project is to identify an HCI problem, propose an original solution and evaluate it. You must work on an interaction for which you can anticipate benefits that you state clearly.

1. Choosing a problem

Each pair of students choose the HCI problem they want to address in their project. The research question is “moderated” by the professors. The idea must be relevant to the course: the solution must be original, your motivations must be clearly stated and convincing, and you should be able to evaluate the interaction with a prototype (which can be anywhere between high and very low fidelity).

The project must be validated by the teachers before the 25th October 2024 and presented in class during the first project session.

2. Design

2.1 State of the art

Once a teacher has validated your project's problem, you must make a quick review of the state of the Art: what approaches have been tried for your problem? Which systems were implemented? What worked and what didn't?

2.2 Propose a solution

Building on the state of the art, you must design an original solution for the identified problem. The design must follow a user centred approach: the interaction must be designed so that is satisfies the users’ needs as well as possible. You must be able to clearly state why this solution is suitable for the problem and could reasonably be expected to improve the users' experience.

3. Evaluation

You must evaluate your solution through a user study.

3.1 Prototyping

You prototype the interaction to evaluate it. Depending on the feasibility, you create either a low or a high fidelity prototype. You will be able to prototype the interaction with specialised input/output devices from Fabrication Laboratory (FabLab) on the campus (called FabMSTIC) and E310 at ENSIMAG (documentation). You will be able to use rapid fabrication tools to build your own devices. Do not hesitate to ask your teachers for more devices if you are looking for something that is not available there.

3.2 User Study

You test the proposed solution by having non-members of the project use it. You evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your proposed solution through examining interaction with your prototype. Take care to separate technical problems (the prototype does not satisfies the specifications) from conceptual problems (stemming from the analysis and/or the design). You can evaluate the solution through objective (e.g. is the solution faster than the status quo) and subjective (e.g. do users prefer this solution) measures. Note that a negative result (i.e. the solution does not improve the user experience) is a valid finding. In this case, discuss possible reasons.

Deliverables

Report

The report (5 pages maximum) should include the following content

Presentation of the scientific question addressed by your study,
rapid overview of the related work,
presentation of your solution,
presentation of your results,
a general discussion and conclusion about your project.

Presentation

Presentation (same outline as the report) + Questions (20 minutes total)

Please select your presentation slot here. Include your group number when booking the presentation time. Please coordinate with your partners and only book one presentation slot per group. Make sure to arrive ahead of your scheduled presentation start with your presentation materials ready - the projector has an HDMI connection, should you require anything else please make sure to let us know well in advance. As your presentations are back-to-back please do NOT enter the room unless the door is open (and the previous group is finished).

Example projects

Examples can be found from last year's Human in the Loop and AR VR courses Schedule/Class notes