Pen-Based Computing: Final Project

Your Choice! [200 points]

Summary of Due Dates

Proposal (4/11, 11:55pm)
Project papers (4/14 and 4/16, in class)
Status report (4/23, in class)
Paper draft 1 (4/28, 11:55pm)
Final Presentations (4/30, in class)
Final papers: 5/9, 5pm

In this class we have looked at a number of techniques for pen-based computing, but there are tons more that we haven't even touched. The goal of this assignment is for you to explore an idea of your choice in my depth. You will choose a topic, write a proposal, and then complete what you propose over the rest of the semester. You will also have to write a final report and give a final presentation.

[20 points]: Project Proposal
DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 11:55pm

Your first task is to come up with your project group and submit a project proposal. Here are the guidelines for choosing a project:

You need to involve pen-based computing in some way, but you do not have to involve techniques or problems we've talked about. You could choose to implement something we haven't had a chance to talk about yet.
You can propose to develop an application or a technique, or both. For example, you might develop a new recognition algorithm, or you might build a system for taking notes that combines several techniques we've talked about.
You may use any resources you can find, including code you have written for this class or other classes, code provided with the book, data you find on the web, etc. If you would like a resource and can't find it, ask and I might be able to help you.
You should be able to find at least two papers in the literature that relate to your project. These papers should be on work that solves the same or a similar problem.
You have 4 weeks to complete this project, with several reports along the way. You should aim for a project that would take about 35-40 hours per person total time. This means about 30 hours of actual development and problem solving, and then about 10 hours spent on writeup and presentation preparation.

Here's what your proposal should include:

The members of the team
A 1-paragraph description of the problem you will solve.
A 1-3 paragraph description of how you plan to solve the problem.
What results you aim to obtain and how you will evaluate your approach. Note that this does not mean "how well do you think your approach will work", rather, "How will you measure how well your approach is working"
A list of the two papers you found related to your project and a 1 paragraph description of how what you are proposing relates to what the authors of the papers have done. It's OK to implement something that's been done before.
The resources you will use to complete your project. Be sure this is a complete list.

Project (and paper)! [130 points]
FIRST DRAFT PAPER DUE MONDAY, APRIL 28, 11:55pm
SECOND DRAFT PAPER DUE FRIDAY, MAY 2, 11:55pm
FINAL PAPER DUE FRIDAY, MAY 9, 5pm

The bulk of the project is simple. You simply do what you said you would do in your proposal and then report on it.

You will submit only a paper for your final project. I don't need to see any code. However, your paper must be complete enough for me (or anyone else) to fully understand what you did. I would like you to think of this as a real (potential) submission to a conference or workshop. It is unlikely that you can complete enough work to have a submittable paper in this short time (most workshop projects take several months to develop and write up, if not several years!). But if you get excited about your project, I would encourage you to continue working on it after the end of the semester and plan to submit it to a conference in the future.

We will use a real conference format for our papers. We will use the ACM format. You should get the template files from the ACM template site and use them for your paper format. If you have any questions about how to format your paper, please let me know. Your paper should be short--no more than 3 pages, but 2 pages is preferred (the draft can, and probably should, be longer to make sure you didn't forget anything). Keep in mind that writing a paper this short takes work and planning.

As far as the sections you include in the paper, there's no standard format, but the following sections outline a common approach to covering the important points:

An Introduction that motivates and describes the problem and the results at a high level.
A Background section that explains the basics of the algorithms you applied to the problem.
A System Description or Approach section that provides the details of how you constructed your system, how it works, and how you tailored the algorithms described in the previous section to the problem at hand.
A Results section that describes how well the system performs. A format that often works well here is to first explain your evaluation techniques, provide their results, and then explain those results and what they say about the problem and about your approach(es) to it.
A Conclusion, usually very brief, in which you can summarize your system and the results. In addition, this is a chance to be less scientific in your opinions about the project and a chance to put it in the larger context of larger, more general problems (such as the general vision problem or a broad subfield).

This paper should not include a print out of code. Thus it is essential that you provide enough detail about what you did and your results for me to understand clearly exactly what you did.

Note that you will submit several drafts of your paper. It is essential that these drafts be as complete as possible. You will get to revise and resubmit your drafts, but starting from something that is too rough makes it difficult for me to give you meaningful feedback.

You will be graded on:

How creative your project and solution is (but don't go overboard here. It's perfectly fine to implement someone else's creative ideas--you get creativity points for finding them).
How well your solution is implemented
How complete your project is
How well your solution works
How well you write up your project, including how well you address comments from draft to draft.
More guidelines may be added here to address your specific project.

Project Presentations [20 points]
IN CLASS, WEDNESDAY APRIL 30

You will give a short (~10 minute) presentation of your work in class on Wednesday, April 30 (the last day of classes). The purpose of this short time frame is for you to practice giving the essential information about what you did in a very short period of time. (At SIGGRAPH, a major computer graphics conference, every author gets literally 1 minute (!!) to present their work on the first day of the program.)

Your presentation must include the following information

Why should I (or anyone else care) about what you did?
What specific technical problem did you solve?
How did you solve this problem?
Why did you choose this solution?
How well does it work (and how do you know)?

You presentations will be graded on:

Content conveyed (How well did you address each of the points above)
Organization
Speaking style

Paper presentations [10 points]
WEEK OF APRIL 14

The week of April 14, you will "pitch" your project to the rest of the class, including presenting work related to your project in some detail. These presentations will be similar to the paper presentations you gave earlier in the semester, but you will also include details about your specific project. Again, your presentation should be about 30 minutes (can be longer or shorter depending on the number of presentations). You should be sure to include the following:

What technical problem are you addressing with your project and why is it important to PBC. (Make it exciting and clear).
What technical problem did the authors of your chosen paper address and how does it relate to the problem you've chosen?
The details of the paper's technical approach (so that everyone in the class can understand it)
The details of your solution and how it relates to the solution presented
How you plan to evaluate your project and what results you hope to obtain

Project Status Report [10 points]
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23, IN CLASS

With about 2 weeks to go, you will present your progress to the class. You should have something concrete to show. That is, you should have something running that you can demo to the class. Failure to have a working demo and/or preliminary results will result in a 0 for your progress report. Your presentation should be short--around 10-15 minutes. It should include the following:

A reminder of your problem and your proposed solution
An overview of your timeline and where you are on that timeline
A demo and illustration of preliminary results/software
A discussion of any issues that have emerged
Discussion of how you will obtain your results and your plan for the rest of the semester.