Final Project Guidelines
During the last five weeks of the course, you and your team will be designing and implementing a final project of your choosing. Think of your final project as one part of a larger goal you might work towards — dedicated to topic or idea that you’re excited about, and a step beyond what you currently know how to do. You don’t have to complete your whole vision…just a slice of it. The most important thing is for you your team to pick something you’re interested in and excited about.
Think broadly and creatively: don’t be afraid to take a risk and explore something you do not yet know how to do. Even if you don’t ultimately implement all of the features that you want, you can still design the interactions and test out some of your ideas with other people (your classmates, friends, and family).
Scoping Criteria / Ground Rules
Aim to scope your project so that you can arrive at a coherent stopping point by the end of the quarter. I am hesitant to provide too many scoping criteria/restrictions a priori. I would rather work with you and your team to scope something that is doable after first seeing what you’re interested in. That said, here are a few guidelines:
1. Team Guidelines
You may work on your own or in groups of up to 4 people. Your work plan should be commensurate with the number of people in your group. This project is not your life’s work — it’s the beginning of a longer journey into web technologies. As such, scope your project to something reasonable. You can always build on these ideas later.
2. Design v. Implementation?
From the perspective of what you will actually have to implement, you will be prioritizing the user interface. In other words, you will be implementing the look and feel of the user interaction using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which will involve interacting with data (even if it’s fake data). However, you won’t be implementing the entire data / ML workflow for the particular interaction (unless you really want to). That said, you will be required to draw a diagram of the data / ML workflow, which will encourgage you to think through some of the specifics of the data.
3. Evaluation Criteria
There are a few requirements that all projects must meet, which include:
- Running testing and evaluation sessions
- Designing particular data resources in terms of the interactions you hope to support
- Implementing user interfaces using HTML, CSS, and Javascript
- Ensuring that your interfaces interact with an actual database (even if you’re using fake data).
That said, your team gets to decide what the interactions will look like, and how many to implement – which will vary depending on the # of teammates and the nature of the interactions you hope to support. As such, you will also be evaluated based on (high-level) metrics that you set for yourself (so long as Sarah signs off on them). We have posted some potential interactions that your team might choose to implement. That said, don’t feel confined to these if you have other ideas that you would like to explore.
Milestones
You will be completing 3 project milestones in the coming weeks (which you will set for yourself), and then a final deliverable. You will also be presenting your final deliverable during the last day of class.