CS 171/CSCI E-64 Final Projects

Due Date: May 9, 2007, noon EST

Your final project is to design and implement a visualization tool that allows you to answer a question you have about some sort of personally relevant data. You will acquire the data, design your visualization method, implement the tool, and analyze the results.

There are three milestones for you final project. First is a project proposal and in-class presentation. Second is a midpoint evaluation of the status of your project. And third is the final project and another in-class presentation. The complete project will be graded on a 0--100 scale.

You are permitted (and encouraged) to form teams of two, three, or four people and to partition the work among the team members. The work expected from each team will be proportional to the size of the team. You can use the class mailing list to find prospective team members.

This document contains the project requirements, as well as a list of project ideas. None of the projects are worked out in detail; they are only suggestions. You may also propose a project of your own.

1. Important Dates

Monday, March 17, Noon EST Project proposals due
Wednesday, March 19 Project Fast Forward presentations
Friday, March 28 Feedback on proposals
Wednesday, April 16, Noon EST Midpoint evaluation due
Friday, May 9 Projects due
Monday, May 12 and Wednesday, May 14 Project presentations
Friday, May 16 Project webpage due

It is critical to note that no extensions will be given for any of these due dates, for any reason. Late days may not be used.

Projects submitted after the due date will not be graded.

2. Project Proposals (20 points)

Your group should submit either an html page (ie. a zipped directory including any the linked images) or a pdf of your project proposal, which should be 1-2 pages. If multiple groups submit proposals on the same topic, the group that submits first will be approved --- the other groups must resubmit another idea. Here is what your proposal should contain:

  • Project title

  • Project members (names and emails)

  • The question you want to answer

  • Sources of data (if you project will require specific equipment such as sound capturing devices please talk to us in advance and we may be able to purchase some of this)

  • The target audience

  • Proposed visualization and interaction methods, i.e., what exactly are you planning to implement? What is the list of features you will include (loading data, switching between different types of plots, mouse functions, etc.)? Describe each feature, and be as specific as possible. Bullets are fine. You should order the features of your program in terms of importance (most important feature first, etc.).

  • The minimum set of features you will include. The number of minimum features must be proportional to the number of team members, ie. something like n*num_members where n is the number of features one person can implement. We consider what one person can implement to be at least equivalent to a homework assignment with extra credit.

  • Partition of work for each member

Use bulleted items where possible. Send your proposals to miriah@seas.harvard.edu. We will review each proposal and we may suggest modifications if necessary. Our main concern is the amount of effort a given project will require; either too much or too little is unacceptable.

The Proposal Fast Forward will be a 1-2 slide, one-minute presentation by one member of your group. We would like to know what your question is, the data you plan to acquire, and a brief description of your visualization design.

3. Midpoint Evaluation (10 points)

By the midpoint evaluation due data you should have your data collected and the design of your visualization fleshed out. We would like for you to sketch out your design and describe the data you acquired. Your design can be in PowerPoint, Photoshop, or any other drawing tool you prefer. You can also sketch on paper and submit photos if necessary. Submit your design as a zipped file with the data description in an email to miriah@seas.harvard.edu.

4. Final Project (70 points)

Your final project can be implemented using any API or programming language you would like, but we will only support and answer questions Processing. The hand-in for your final project will include a write-up html file and a working application. Include a README that describes the code and application files, and how your program should be run. We will be grading these projects on a variety of platforms, so if you are not using Processing, you must include detailed instructions on how to run or compile your code. If we cannot run your application from the instructions included with your submission, we will not be able to grade this portion of the final project.

Your write-up should address the following questions:

  • What is your motivating question and why did you choose it?

  • Describe your data in detail: where did it come from, how did you acquire it, what does it mean, etc.

  • Describe your design and why you chose the features you did.

  • How do you use your application (mouse and keyboard functions, input/output, etc)?

  • What is the answer to your question? What other interesting insights about your data did you gain from your visualization?

  • What extensions and improvements can you suggest?

  • What did you most enjoy about working on this project? What was the most challenging aspect? What was the most frustrating? What would you do differently next time?

The work expected from each team will be proportional to the size of the team. In general, we do not anticipate that the grades for each group member will be different. However, we reserve the right to assign different grades to each group member if it becomes apparent that one of them put in a vastly different amount of effort than the other. (The emphasis here is on "vastly different").

The final project grades are dependent on the following criteria:

  • Attempted difficulty: Some projects are harder than others. For example, an assignment based off of one of the homework assignments is probably easier than a Facebook application that visualizes a person's friend network.

  • Did you meet your major goals? The most important grading criteria is functionality: A working program will always garner the majority of available points; no credit will be given for non-working programs. A modest solution that works will be graded much more favorably than an ambitious "solution" that core dumps! Also important is implementing your minimum feature set. And finally, an answer to your motivating question.

  • Secondary criteria: The following secondary criteria will be used to differentiate among working programs: additional features included beyond the minimum set; complexity of insight into the data your visualization enables; astetic quality of the design and efficiency of the implementation.

To submit your final project, first put your project directories and write-up into a directory named teammember1lastname-firstinitial_teammemeber2lastname-firstinitial_teammember3lastname-firstintial with the appropriate number of team members (e.g. meyer-m_pfister-h), and zip the directory. You can upload the file to the file sharing site YouSendIt, and place miriah@seas.harvard.edu in the To field under "Send a file now".

Project Webpage

Finally, you will submit a short webpage that describes your final project. We will be posting these off of the course website to hightlight all the great work you did for your projects! You may choose to include, or not, your application and code. But you must include screenshots of your visualization, along with a brief overview of your project question and the features of the system you developed. For more information about the webpage content please look at the example webpage here. Feel free to use it as a template for your own page, although you may design this website any way you choose.

This webpage is due on Friday, May 16th. We will not grade these, but, we will not include the final project in your class grade if you do not submit this.

To submit your webpage and all linked files and images, place the .html file and all other files in a directory named teammember1lastname-firstinitial_teammemeber2lastname-firstinitial_teammember3lastname-firstintial with the appropriate number of team members (e.g. meyer-m_pfister-h), and zip the directory. You can upload the file to the file sharing site YouSendIt, and place pfister@seas.harvard.edu in the To field under "Send a file now".

5. Academic Honesty

With the proliferation of vast amounts of code on the internet it may be tempting to copy source code from the web. Although we encourage you to look at other Processing (or any other API or programming language) code, all material you hand in is assumed to be your own work. You absolutely must acknowledge any source code that was not written by you. You can mention the original author(s) directly in your source code (comment or header). You should also acknowledge sources in your write-up if you used whole classes or libraries. Do not remove any original copyright notices and headers.

Without prior written approval you may not submit the same material to two courses. Plagiarism, cheating, and other forms of academic dishonesty will be reported to the office of the Dean and can have very serious consequences. If you have any questions about the use of source code derived from other sources please contact both Hanspeter and Miriah. For more information see the Harvard Extension School academic guidelines.

6. Some Project Ideas

Predicting the Next President

This primary year has been exciting and hotly contested. A wealth of information gathered by pollsters and campaign workers exists on everything from campaign fundraising to detailed demographics of voters, and perhaps could, given the right visualization tool, provide some insight into who might be elected as the next US President.

Every Creak and Crack

Using a digital camera and a sound recording device, map out the sights and sounds of your Harvard House or local neighborhood. How does the hustle and bustle of the morning compare to the lazy 2pm hour? Do dust bunnies multiply more quickly on a particular floor? Focus on a prevalent detail that is often overlooked, and perhaps, a misunderstood indicator of the day-to-day habits of your neighborhood community.

What are you listening to?!?!

The folks at Last.fm have a site called Audioscrobbler that provides access to the listening habits and statistics of Last.fm users. Using this database, you could perhaps visualize listening trends that help you decide the perfect music choice for a particular time of day, or, what you should load on your iPod when visiting San Francisco so that you will be sure to fit in.

Facebook My Application

Ever see those furball network graphs of someone's Facebook friend network and think, gee, there must be a better way to look at this data? Well, you can for your final project! On the Facebook developers site you can find loads of information about developing your own Facebook application and how to access Facebook data. Go ahead, invite someone to try-out your app!

Good luck, and have fun!