CS474: Human Computer Interaction - Research Report (100 Points)

Assignment Goals

The goals of this assignment are:
  1. To research an area of interest in human-computer interaction and to present findings in an academic venue
  2. To present research findings to a diverse technical audience

The Assignment

Your final research report will center on a topic related to human-computer interaction. Possible topics might include:

  • Ethics in AI Algorithms (for example: facial recognition software, automatic classification systems)
  • Accessibility Settings: Towards Ubiquitous Design - Normalizing Accessibility Features
  • Wearable Computing
  • Aging-in-Place
  • Security and Privacy on the Internet-of-Things (for example: balancing privacy considerations with pandemic spread contact tracing, preserving autonomy while providing technology for aging-in-place)

For your given topic, research several recent papers related to the topic. You can use the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI) and IEEEXplore as a starting point to look for papers. You will find prominent citations in the references for those papers, and these provide additional material that you should review.

Your goal is to formulate a thesis around your topic, survey the literature and summarize the current state-of-the-art in your chosen space, and then synthesize what you’ve read into a cohesive message supporting your thesis. You should conclude with “Future Work” in which you summarize your vision for the field. In other words: what do these papers provide that is beneficial, and what do they leave open for someone to use this state-of-the-art as a springboard to build upon?

First Draft (25 Points)

Prepare a first draft for feedback, which you will incorporate into your final report

Paper Format

You should use LaTeX to format your report in academic journal format (you can use Overleaf for this purpose). Your report should include:

  • An abstract
  • An introduction section that details your paper’s central thesis
  • A background section motivating the importance of the problem you are investigating
  • A section with subsections describing each of the papers you reviewed
  • A section that synthesizes your findings around your paper’s central thesis
  • A conclusion section
  • A bibliography of at least 5 academic references cited using BibTeX

Your paper should be formatted like these examples (note their sections and references):

Presentation

Prepare a 10-minute presentation summarizing your paper, which you will submit along with your report and present to the class. Here are some example academic paper presentations to guide your design:

Submission

In your submission, please include answers to any questions asked on the assignment page in your README file. If you wrote code as part of this assignment, please describe your design, approach, and implementation in your README file as well. Finally, include answers to the following questions:
  • Describe what you did, how you did it, what challenges you encountered, and how you solved them.
  • Please answer any questions found throughout the narrative of this assignment.
  • If collaboration with a buddy was permitted, did you work with a buddy on this assignment? If so, who? If not, do you certify that this submission represents your own original work?
  • Please identify any and all portions of your submission that were not originally written by you (for example, code originally written by your buddy, or anything taken or adapted from a non-classroom resource). It is always OK to use your textbook and instructor notes; however, you are certifying that any portions not designated as coming from an outside person or source are your own original work.
  • Approximately how many hours it took you to finish this assignment (I will not judge you for this at all...I am simply using it to gauge if the assignments are too easy or hard)?
  • Your overall impression of the assignment. Did you love it, hate it, or were you neutral? One word answers are fine, but if you have any suggestions for the future let me know.
  • Any other concerns that you have. For instance, if you have a bug that you were unable to solve but you made progress, write that here. The more you articulate the problem the more partial credit you will receive (it is fine to leave this blank).

Contract Grading

To Receive an A

  • Each item required for a grade of B is included
  • The final report presents a problem, identifies a central thesis, and supports the thesis claims using the synthesized messaging about the references utilized
  • The final report summarizes the state-of-the-art in the chosen field
  • The final report discusses the potential future of the field based on the references considered
  • The final report properly cites all references in BibTeX format
  • The final report is presented in a LaTeX academic format

To Receive a B

  • Each item required for a grade of C is included
  • The final report synthesizes the academic references into a central thesis
  • The report is presented to the class

To Receive a C

  • Each item required for a grade of D is included
  • The final report presents the academic references and summarizes each one

To Receive a D

  • The final report contains at least 5 meaningful academic references, which are discussed in the report

Please refer to the Style Guide for code quality examples and guidelines.