CS295J/Assignments.11

Final Handin (due before leaving for holidays)

Your final project should produce two artifacts that you hand in:

1. a 2-page extended abstract appropriate for a conference submission as a research result. There are examples on the web from cs295J in 2008 as well as from cs237 from the last several times it was run. As we have discusses in class, the Write a paper page is a good rubric for evaluating your paper; it is what I will use.
2. a short description of the changes you would make to revise proposal we structured the class around. The best examples I have of revised proposals are the "A1" and "A2" versions of the "DTI+MRI ..." NIH proposal we read early in the semester.

• Original proposal
• NIH reviews
• 1st revised proposal
• NIH reviews
• 2nd revised proposal

Your description of changes should include at least

1. a statement that would go in the introduction describing how your work addresses one of the criticisms in the reviews
2. a few sentences that would go in the preliminary work section to summarize your project and to make clear how it supports the overall proposal by demonstrating feasibility, reducing risk, etc.
3. the changes you would make to any other section (research plan, perhaps?).

Each individual should write their own proposal revision. Abstracts may be joint.

Public Presentation (scheduled for noon, Monday 12/19)

Each project will have a maximum of 10 minutes total time, including setup and questions. I recommend targeting 5-6 minutes for presentation allowing for ~3 minutes for questions. For the most part, structuring your presentation around conclusions often works best. Think about how to explain your conclusions to someone who hasn't been in the class with us. Practice with a friend to calibrate what they would need to know. Going through the sections of your written report typically does not make a great presentation.

Assignment 10 (out 30 nov 2011, due 1 dec 2011)

For class tomorrow I had a couple of ideas. One was to follow-up on the blog that Caroline forwarded:

Response to windows 8 feedback

What I thought was interesting was the references back to Fitts's law explaining why cascading menus are a problem and also motivating how Windows 8 will have some new tiles interface. So, please skim through that to get the gist of their perspective. Whether or not it's the right perspective we can discuss in class.

A 2nd idea was to identify analogous interface annoyances and the perceptual, psychological, or cognitive principles that might explain them. So please try to come to class with a few examples akin to the ones we've already discussed (I.e., cascading menus and Fitts's law, overloading visual and verbal working memory, and some of the interface nudging that Radu Jianu did to address some cognitive biases issues).

And the 3rd idea was suggested by Clara:

I found some interesting papers on user interface design/evaluation that I thought might be worth looking at. I'd like to learn about the cognitive and software-based reasoning behind testing and evaluation (i.e. what makes a "good" interface).

HCI as a Science

Web evaluation: Heuristics vs. Testing

Issues with sample size

( this one mentions 10+-2, but I think that 5 ±2 is the right answer in some contexts, as well. -- dhl)

Please at least skim through all 3 of these before class and we will discuss in class.

Assignment 9 (out 15 nov 2011, due dates through 22 nov 2011)

• For Thursday, read and rate two InfoVis papers from the spreadsheet in preparation for in-class discussion. Be ready to give a brief summary of any of the papers you've rated.
• For Tuesday, bring large-format (at least 2x2 pages per real page taped together) printout of one- to two-page paper outline. Be prepared to discuss and augment during class. The research contributions and results are the most important parts to have made progress on. Related work is second most important.
• Bring printout of David's Write a paper page with an evaluation of each point for your outline. Evaluate on a 1-10 scale, with 10 being the best.

Assignment 7 (out 20 oct 2011, due dates through 28 oct 2011)

• By Tuesday, put both versions of your marked up posters on the wiki
• by Tuesday, create a project schedule and put it in a new page off the course main page. The schedule should include a two-page extended abstract as the final deliverable. That abstract should follow the guidelines in the “write a paper” wiki page and incorporate the feedback that we have been generating in our class critiques. The schedule should also include milestones for each Tuesday remaining in the semester. A milestone is something that we can evaluate concretely. “Do some research” is not a milestone. “Complete video capture of 3 users” is a milestone. "Complete reviewable draft of results section” is a milestone. If you have any question about how to structure milestones, please ask in the Google group.
• By Thursday, review all project schedules and send feedback to their author by e-mail
• on Tuesday at 8:30 AM be at the Rhode Island convention Center 5th floor for the VisWeek keynote presentation. If you do not hear otherwise from me, tell the people in the red vests that the password is "goredsox". I may be able to get a more official way to get in, I'm going to use this as the contingency plan.
• On Friday at 10:30 AM be at the Rhode Island convention Center 5th floor for the VisWeek capstone presentation.

Assignment 6 (out 13 oct 2011 (ok, a little later...), two due dates through 20 oct 2011)

• For Tuesday, bring large-format printout of 1-page paper outline. Be prepared to discuss and augment during class much as we did with titles on Thursday. The research contributions and results are the most important parts to have made progress on. Related work is second most important. See David's Write a paper page for more thoughts.
• For Tuesday read "a cognitive model for the perception and understanding of graphs" [[1]]
• For Thursday, complete related work outline. Should include all the citations you need to support the novelty and significance of research reported in your fictional paper. Be prepared to describe and defend the novelty and signficance in class.

Assignment 5 (out 6 oct 2011, several due dates through 13 oct 2011)

• For Tuesday, bring large-format printout of 1-page paper outline. Be prepared to discuss and augment during class much as we did with titles on Thursday. The research contributions and results are the most important parts to have made progress on. Related work is second most important. See David's [/Write a paper] page for more thoughts.
• For Tuesday read "a cognitive model for the perception and understanding of graphs" [[2]]
• For Thursday, complete related work outline. Should include all the citations you need to support the novelty and significance of research reported in your fictional paper. Be prepared to describe and defend the novelty and significance in class.
• might want to look at some of the boards and hand ins from last instantiation of class== Assignment 4 (out 29 sep 2011, several due dates through 6 oct 2011) ==

Assignment 4 (several due dates through 5 oct 2011)

• by Tuesday, complete the draft response letter.
  • This is the response that we already started.
  • This is a group effort, so please do your fair share! That said, there shouldn't be more than two or three substantial comments per person. There will be more "addressed by response to comment 3.5".
  • Label your responses with your name in square brackets.
  • If you point out to a changed section in the proposal or pre-proposal where the change isn't clear, please put enough additional detail about what would be in that section so that others would be able to make the change. Put that additional detail in square brackets.
  • All response verbiage to left margin.
  • All responses clearly indicative of what they are responding to; perhaps most easily done by numbering parts of the review to indicate the start of what the next response addresses.
  • All criticisms addressed. Be careful not to address one part of a criticism and miss a second part -- reviewers don't like that!
  • All unnecessary parts of the original reviews removed. For example, a set of typos might be listed in a review; they can be addressed without repeating them in the letter by summarizing what was there. Often, a redundant set of comments can be removed, but this is riskier if it is not obviously redundant. It is also ok to paraphrase a part of the critique if you indicate that you are doing so. This is important when there are space issues.
  • Any redundancies in the response removed by pointing to the first instance of the repeated answer.
• by Tuesday, read all of the papers we didn't finish in class Thursday. As a general rule, I expect everyone to read every paper. We had the "discussant" concept the first week, but I hadn't meant for it to continue. I'd really like everyone to be able to discuss every paper. Please come to class with your notes about every paper so you can refer back to them -- I don't expect everyone to *remember* everything, just to be able to recall it from notes.
• by Tuesday, add 1/2 (on average) of a paper to our Literature to read for week 5. By that I mean half of you should add one paper; the other half will get a chance next time. First come first serve (but you can negotiate if someone added one and you'd really like to get yours in there sooner).
• by Thursday, read the five new papers, bring your notes on them to class, and bring additional project ideas

Assignment 3 (out 23 sep 2011, several due dates through 29 sep 2011)

• pair up with someone in class and critique each others draft reviewer response
• revise your draft reviewer response to address the critique, which might include issues of clarity, appropriateness of a technique, significance, risk, etc.
• be prepared to have the group critique your revised response in class Tuesday
• by Monday noon add at least three papers to the literature page. The three should be relevant to a reviewer response. They might help establish a point that wasn't clear to the reviewers, provide evidence that some risky part is feasible, or be a basis for some additional preliminary work that could be added to the proposal. Summarize this relevance in the comments for each of the three papers.
• by Tuesday class select one of the three to own and put on the Literature to read for week 4
• by Thursday class be prepared to spend 1-2 minutes reminding us about the paper you own and explaining the relationship to a revised proposal.
• by Thursday class read and be prepared to discuss all of the readings

Assignment 2 (out 15 sep 2011, several due dates through 22 sep 2011)

• find readings that develop some of the areas we read about in the first group of papers
• by Monday noon add new readings to big literature page. If you've got a tentative summary evaluation, go ahead and add it. It's ok to edit folks' summary evaluations, but try to make the result more accurate or precise without losing information.
• by Tuesday class finish with tentative summary evaluations of your new readings and also "own" at least one as-relevant-as-possible reading as yours. Put into Literature to read for week 3
• by Thursday class -- author a summary description, less than 250 words, in the wiki of how the reading you own relates to our project. Be prepared to describe, in two (2!) minutes, how your reading relates to the project. Also be prepared for everyone in class to discuss your description. You may bring notes for yourself, but no slides. The wiki page for your reading will be displayed while you talk.
• by Thursday class -- read and be prepared to discuss all of the other readings (for an appropriate definition of "read")
• by Thursday class read proposal and pre-proposal reviews, identify a significant criticism, and draft a short response. Make it short enough that you can write it on the board during class. Please add to Response to Reviewers

Assignment 1 (out 8 sep 2011, several due dates through 15 sep 2011)

• spend 10 hours adding to any part of the wiki you think is relevant
• read both Research proposal before proposals.
• by Monday noon add new readings. If you've got a tentative summary evaluation, go ahead and add it. It's ok to edit folks summary evaluations, but try to make the result more accurate or precise without losing information.
• by Tuesday class finish with tentative summary evaluations of your new readings and also identify at least one as-relevant-as-possible reading as yours. This can be one of the new readings you added or something someone else doesn't own. Put your name on that entry in the reading list as the "owner" so that there are no duplicates.
• by Wednesday 5pm -- select 2 additional relevant readings that are owned and that you will read by class Thursday and be prepared to discuss. Put your name as a "discussant" in the reading list; there should be a max of two discussants per reading.
• by Thursday class -- author a summary description, less than 250 words, in the wiki of how the reading you own relates to our project. Be prepared to describe, in two (2!) minutes, how your reading relates to the project. Also be prepared for everyone in class to discuss your description. You may bring notes for yourself, but no slides. The wiki page for your reading will be displayed while you talk.
• by Thursday class -- read and be prepared to discuss the other two readings you choose.
• Let me know if you have any kind of problems. You should be spending right around 8-10 hours each week -- if that's a problem, let's talk.
• The How Tos page has some tips. Edit or add as you find others.