The final project involves a complete design and evaluation process for a prototype interactive system. You must design a prototype system in response to a real-world problem. You will evaluate this system and report on the results using HCI research methods. Your design and evaluation challenge is as follows:
Sustainable living through technology: You woke up this morning, checked your email, and found that you have a new job—ANU Student Lead for Sustainable Living! Your challenge is to help university students adopt sustainable behaviours in their everyday lives guided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which call for urgent action on climate change, responsible consumption, and sustainable communities. You will need to choose a focus (e.g., energy use, waste reduction, transportation, consumption), prototype and evaluate an interface to make sustainable living more accessible, engaging or effective. Your system should involve a level of non-standard interaction1, either through unusual use of standard computer IO hardware, or a novel interface.
To address this challenge, you will need to develop a specific research question that incorporates your area of interaction, a problem, and a justification. You will need to design a testable prototype2, and create an evaluation plan. You will need to run an evaluation of your prototype with 3–5 classmates, analyse data, and articulate findings that connect to your research question.
Your work will be submitted as a portfolio including your prototype materials, research data, analysis, references, and a presentation. The presentation should cover the research question, design rationale, prototype demonstration, evaluation methodology, and results in the following sections:
Research Question, Plan, and Conclusions: explain why you chose the system you have designed, your study plan including data gathering strategies, analysis framework(s), and justification from HCI academic research, and summarise the overall conclusions from your data analysis.
Prototype Design and Features: explain your prototype design and features, including visual documentation and demonstration of how it can be tested. Explain how it meets the needs of users in this context of use.
Research Data, Analysis and Findings: present analysis of your data and your findings from this data, include excerpts from data, plots, tables, or other presentation approaches to help articulate your findings. NB: in this project, you can choose to collect either qual, quant, or both types of data.
COMP6390 Only—Positionality Statement: critically reflect on your presence and influence within the technology design process in a statement of positionality. This statement must reflect on your experiences and background and how this manifests in the design and research process. This section is required for postgraduate students to meet Learning Outcome 5 in COMP6390. Undergraduate students should not complete this section.
You will also include a written version of your presentation with the same headings. The written document may be a transcript of your presentation or may be slightly different text.
Note: your presentation video is the primary document for marking purposes.
project-presentation.mp4
.mp4 format using h.264
or h.265 video encodingproject-documentation.md which
follows the provided headings (N.B.: this text may be a
transcript of your spoken presentation with references and images, it
may also be a slightly different text.)
comp3900-2025-research-project
repository on Gitlab by the due dateYou must record a 5-minute presentation that articulates your work in the format of the above sections. Your presentation must:
The easiest way to create a five-minute presentation would be to use Microsoft Powerpoint, and record the presentation using the built in recording tool. Instructions for recording the presentation are here (link). Microsoft 365 applications are provided to all ANU students.
Important: Note that you must not use generative AI or text-to-speech software to create or record your presentation. It must be you presenting your research and you must be identifiable in the video recording.
Submissions that do not clearly meet these requirements may be aligned with the “N” standard in one or more rubric criteria and may be required to complete a supplementary presentation before grades are finalised.
project-presentation.mp4Here’s how to get started with the work in this assignment:
Develop a research question for the design and evaluation challenge using the RQ framework
Ideate and design a testable prototype as a solution to the design and evaluation challenge. Use your research skills to find examples of related systems (e.g., at CHI) and use them to inform your process.
Create an evaluation plan. Make sure your study plan is realistic.
Find participants – they must be current COMP3900/6390 students. Attend all classes and find 3–5 people in your tutorial who will participate in each others’ studies. Don’t leave this until the last minute!
Collect data with your participants. You could do this during a drop-in session. You will need to participate in other people’s studies as well ask them to participate in yours. (don’t make up the data).
Analyse your data. Use the analysis techniques covered in classes. Remember that you do not need to collect both quantitative and qualitative data in this assessment and can choose what data and analyses to perform depending on your design choices and interests.
Summarise your findings. Your overall conclusions should be supported by data and analysis.
Write up your project in the correct format in your fork of the gitlab repository. Make sure you are using correct markdown syntax and have included all data and analysis files in your repository.
Create and record a presentation following the instructions
above. Ensure that the presentation video is in .mp4
format, and is less than 330 seconds. Make sure that you record your own
voice and include video of your face in the presentation video. You can
do
this using Microsoft Powerpoint (ANU-provided software). Upload your
recorded presentation as project-presentation.mp4 in your
fork of the project repository.
Acknowledge your research participants by listing them in your Acknowledgements section.
Here’s some general advice:
Once you’ve uploaded your final presentation video, all materials, and have green ticks on the CI jobs for your GitLab repo you have completed all the assessment tasks for COMP3900/6390!
If you are curious about more learning and research in HCI here’s a few options:
Whether you wish to learn more about HCI or are leaving us here, congratulations on completing your final project for this class! Thanks for coming on this journey with us!
| CRITERIA | HD | D | CR | P | N |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sophistication and clarity of the design research plan in terms of HCI design and research methods. (UG: 10 marks, PG: 5 marks) | Excellent to outstanding research plan demonstrating consideration of HCI design and research methods that goes beyond learning materials. Research question is precise and well-justified. Level of communication and referencing is excellent. | Very good research plan applying HCI design and research methods that follows specification, but not beyond learning materials. Research question is clear and justified. Level of communication and referencing is excellent. | A research plan following HCI design and research methods at the level of learning materials. Research question is present. Level of communication and referencing is good. | Some effort to follow the specification for a research plan. Research question may be vague or poorly justified. Level of communication and referencing may have some errors. | A research plan with little connection to HCI design and research methods or one that is below acceptable standards. May not follow the specification or contain serious errors in communication and referencing. |
| Sophistication as a prototype addressing identified user needs. (10 marks) | Excellent to outstanding prototype demonstrating a thorough design and prototyping process with clear consideration of user needs. Prototype interaction is clearly demonstrated through video. Excellent adherence to the assessment format. | Very good prototype demonstrating a thorough design and prototyping process with consideration of user needs. Prototype interaction is demonstrated through video. Excellent adherence to the assessment format. | A good prototype that demonstrates a design and prototyping process. May not fully address user needs. Prototype interaction may not be clear from the documentation. Good adherence to the assessment format. | A satisfactory prototype with limited engagement with the design process or user needs. Demonstration of interaction may be absent or unclear. Adherence to the submission format may be poor. | Below acceptable standards as a prototype. May have very poor adherence to submission format. |
| Sophistication of data collection, analysis and critical evaluation of findings. (20 marks) | Excellent to outstanding data collection and analysis demonstrating in-depth understanding of HCI evaluation approaches. Findings are clearly connected to the research question and demonstrate critical evaluation of the prototype design. Excellent adherence to the assessment format. | Very good data collection and analysis demonstrating in-depth understanding of HCI evaluation approaches. Findings are connected to the research question with some critical evaluation of the prototype design. Excellent adherence to the assessment format. | Good data collection and analysis demonstrating HCI evaluation approaches at the level of learning materials. Findings address the research question. Good adherence to the assessment format. | Satisfactory data collection and analysis with limited connection to HCI evaluation approaches. Findings may be weakly connected to the research question. Adherence to submission format may be poor. | Data collection, analysis and findings that are below acceptable standards. May have very poor adherence to submission format. Data collection and analysis may contain serious errors. |
| PG Only: Sophistication of reflexive positionality statement and how this manifests in the design process. (PG: 5 marks) | Deep, specific reflection across all parts of the process — design choices, research methods, data analysis, and interpretation of findings. Clearly articulates how background and presence shaped specific decisions at each stage. | Meaningful reflection across multiple parts of the process with clear specificity. May not address all stages but depth of reflection is evident. | Either covers multiple stages superficially without specific connection to decisions, or reflects with depth on one aspect of the process only. | Superficial reflection making general claims about background without connecting to specific design or research decisions. | Positionality statement is absent or below acceptable standards. Little evidence of reflection on the designer’s presence and influence in the design process. |
Non-standard interaction is a bit difficult to define but should be something that goes beyond a standard web-application operated only by keyboard, mouse, or touchscreen. Your prototype can involve these standard technologies, it should also involve interaction beyond them in some way.↩︎
A testable prototype should enable evaluation with a potential user. This can be achieved with different levels of fidelity but needs to enable a user to enact or imagine the specific process of an interaction in order to measure their experience.↩︎