Intro-ML-Arts-IMA-Summer24

Final Project

Your final project is a two-week assignment to be completed in four stages (proposal, prototype, testing, and presentation). Proposal presentations will be on August 6. Final project presentations will be August 15.

The final project should be a creative project that builds off of or is inspired by the concepts we’ve covered this term. You should feel free to think non-traditionally, projects do not need to be screen-based and there is no requirement to use a particular programming language or machine learning model.

Final projects can be collaborations with anyone in any class. Final projects can be one part of a larger project integrated with a different class. Just be transparent about what you are doing.

Other notes:

1. Keeping things simple and small in scope is a plus. If your project idea is a big one, consider documenting the larger idea but implementing just a small piece of it.
2. Also think about making a final project for a small audience, even one single person like a family member or friend… or yourself. This can be a good way to focus your idea and design process. “Generalizing” the idea can come later (or maybe not at all).

Proposal Guidelines

It’s up to you to determine how to best present your idea. Be prepared to present for a few minutes with visual aids. Show us your inspirations or make a prototype (even if it’s just on paper). At a minimum, prepare the following:

• Project title.
• One sentence description: Can you summarize your idea in one sentence? Stick to the facts – what are you planning to make?
• Project abstract: ~250-word description of your project.
• Inspiration: How did you become interested in this idea?
• Visual reference: Drawings, photos, artworks, texts, or other media that relate to your idea.
• Audience: Who are you making the project for? How do you expect your audience to interact with your piece? What will their experience be like?
• Challenges: What is your biggest technical and/or conceptual challenge you anticipate?
• Code sketches: This is not required but if you have sketches in progress share them as additional links for feedback.

Document the above elements in a blog post and selectively edit the material to present with slides. Link to your post and slides on the proposal wiki. Plan to present your idea in less than 5 minutes, leaving about 5 minutes for discussion.

Guidelines for Giving Proposal Feedback

• Is the idea clear? What do you understand / not understand?
• Is the scope reasonable? Can it be done in such a short period of time?
• Any suggestions for relevant tutorials, examples, or other resources?

Project Prototype

Implement at least one component of your final project and share it with the class. Class time will be allocated for you to make more progress on your project. Make a goal for yourself for the session. There will also be time to informally ask questions or have additional individual discussions about your project.

Start working on your final documentation and include this as a part of your progress.

Project Testing

By this session, you should have mostly completed your final project and it should be ready for user testing. Class time will be allocated for exchanging feedback and making final adjustments to your project.

Keep working on your final documentation and include what you learn in this session in your user testing section.

Final Presentation and Documentation Guidelines

Final project presentations are Thursday, August 15. In-class presentations will be approximately 15 minutes each.

Please post your final project documentation to a web page (blog post is fine) and link next to your name on the final presentation wiki. This is due Friday, August 16.

Final Project presentations are demonstrations and do not require a slide deck, however, you might find slides useful to help you plan and structure your demo and discussion. Your documentation should come in written form (equivalent of 1-3 pages) as a blog post. It’s up to you to figure out how to best document your project, at a minimum, please include the following:

• Title
• Sketch link
• One sentence description
• Project summary (250–500 words)
• Inspiration: How did you become interested in this idea? Quotes, photographs, products, projects, people, music, political events, social ills, etc.
• Process: How did you make this? What did you struggle with? What were you able to implement easily and what was difficult?
• Audience/Context: Who is this for? How will people experience it? Is it interactive? Is it practical? Is it for fun? Is it emotional? Is it to provoke something?
• User testing: What was the result of user testing? How did you apply any feedback?
• Source code
• Code references: What examples, tutorials, references did you use to create the project? (You must cite the source of any code you use in code comments. Please refer to the syllabus for additional expectations and guidelines.)
• Next steps: If you had more time to work on this, what would you do next?

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