P1—Project pitch

Due 2023-11-17, 11:59pm EST 10pts

Follow all the instructions below.

Please post any questions about this assignment on Slack.

Change log
Aim of the assignment

Change log

2023-11-17: Fixed Gradescope assignment. A student got a bug bounty! +2 pts

Aim of the assignment

The goal of our course project is to expose students to the real-world design process of creating a useful visualization. In this first project assignment, you are required to come up with a project idea and share it with the teaching staff. The idea should be as fully-formed as possible so that you will receive more meaningful feedback early.

Background information

You’ll have a chance to pitch the ideas to Prof. Dunne in advance during class on 2023-11-14. For info on what we expect from your projects, please refer to the P2—Project presentation and deliverable.

Instructions

1. Identify an area of interest and your group

In groups of ~3, find an area to focus your exploration. Ideally this (your project) should be relevant to your research, career, public, or personal interests. Ensure that there are real challenges in this area that could be aided and/or solved with data visualization.

2. Identify a partner

Find a project partner (outside of this class) working in your area of interest. It can be an individual, a group, or an organization—but you should have one individual partner you can depend on as a point-person throughout your project.

Any of the following partner’s would be acceptable, but this list is non-exhaustive:

A non-profit organization.
An academic or industry researcher at any level including faculty, scientists, post-docs, or PhD students.
A government body.
A campus organization.
A for-profit company—Not encouraged and only select as a last resort. The focus of the project is to partner with organizations that usually don’t have means to easily help themselves. Additionally, partnering with a for-profit company adds intellectual property and publishing challenges.

Warning: Ensure that your selected partner have the time and commitment necessary to meet with you several times and to give you any data/materials/feedback that you need. Ensure that they are well aware of the timeline of the project in order for your project to go smoothly.

3. Identify a dataset

Find a suitable dataset that you will visualize to help solve the problem faced by your partner. Ideally this dataset should be provided by your project partner and should match the project innovation. The data should already exist in a clean, machine-readable, and available-to-you form.

Warning: Make sure your potential partner already has clean data in a machine-readable format (like CSV or JSON) that they are willing to share publicly.

If you don’t have easy and early access to clean, machine-readable data you will not be able to make good progress. It can take a really long time for a partner to go through data cleaning and any privacy or legal implications, and you don’t want to wait on that. You should not accept timeliness promises from people providing your data. E.g., these situations are notorious for taking way longer than expected or completely failing to work:

“It will be ready soon” as it needs de-identification, cleaning, data entry, or algorithm development.
“It won’t take long” to get the necessary legal/managerial approval to release the data to you. Note that a small organization or startup can actually be trusted more to move quickly but anything large is probably a non-starter.

Therefore, only trust that you will have the data that you already have in-hand.

If you generate/collect your own data, you should have a back-up plan in case the data generation/collection fails. You also will not receive additional credit for generating/collecting your data.

4. Write your pitch

In under 400 words, write up your group members and a description of your project idea in detail and as exhaustively as possible. Ensure that you cover each of the points above in sufficient detail that the teaching staff and other students can understand what you want to do and provide feedback. If there is additional background information that would be relevant, please include them. E.g., tools you’d use, sketches, images, examples of existing solutions. Hyperlinks to any relevant materials that would help us evaluate your pitch are highly encouraged.

Submission Instructions

One person from the group should create a PDF from your document and ensure it contains everything required for parts 1–4. They should then submit it as a single PDF to the assignment P1—Project pitch on GradeScope.

Note: Use Gradescope’s Group Members tab to add the members of your group to your submission.

Grading Notes

Your pitch should have a clear focus and a comprehensive explanation of the partner problem and data.
You will be graded on the quality, meaningfulness, and feasibility of your project idea as well as your writing.
Points will be deducted for grammar and spelling mistakes.