Capstone Project Archive
| Project Title | People | |
|---|---|---|
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The 12th Man is a collaborative communication system designed for
coaches and players on the same athletic team. The design has two
components, an interactive whiteboard and an online application.
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Matthew Eisenstadt Spring 2006 |
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Mutual Politics: Relating Power with Others Political discussion often faces obstacles to communication that include prior assumption about political opinions, inability to access information, and a general disconnection from the people with the power to make decisions. By applying Relational-Cultural Theory(RCT) to the interaction model, online political forums may be seen to exhibit both structural and cultural disincentives to meaningful engagement with other discussants. The concept of mutuality – joining together in a kind of relationship in which all participants are engaged, empathic and growing – is used as a lens to view potential design changes. Research efforts centered on a six-month study, PoliticWiki, in which participants were asked to use a wiki to collaborate on a new political platform. The findings identify content, structure and leadership as factors contributing to failed collaboration. Other investigations included an agent-based model to simulate critical mass and sustainability of forums, and an unconference (self-organized learning spaces) conducted at a local event sponsored by the Council of Neighborhood Associations (CONA). Several design concepts emerged: Integrated Discussion Channels; Federated Groups; Local Authorship; and Separation and Focus. Future work will develop this concept system to measure and increase the degree of mutuality within online conversation. |
Kevin Makice Spring 2006 |
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Opening a Window in the Black Box Biologists love biology. But increasingly, they need computational tools like BLAST and MEGA to do the research. Because they consider this a peripheral part of their work, they commonly learn "just enough" to get the job done. This leads to mistakes, the mistakes end up in big databases like NCBI GenBank or the Gene Ontology, and the quality of everyone's work goes down. In addition, most biologists are only aware of a handful of tools and a few ways to use them. They don't think "how could software help me", they think "how do I get this thing to work." My goal was to design a new tool that would provide immediate educational payoff to biologists who want to invest a small amount of time into learning about the software, and to encourage and support critical thinking about how the software works under the hood. |
Erik Pukinskis Spring 2006 |
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For people in many organizations, presentations are a way of life. From business meeting rooms to university lecture halls and even to elementary school classrooms, oral presentations are becoming more and more prevalent each day. The leading presentation software tool today is Microsoft Powerpoint, a member of a larger category of tools called Slideware, which aid in the easy creation of presentation slides. Though these software tools are easy to use, a study completed as part of this research found that many presentation audiences today are unhappy by slide-driven presentations. This project aims to discover why audiences are unhappy with modern software-based presentations, and looks forward, in order to create new software that encourages positive presentation practices throughout the presentation planning process. |
Josh Evnin Spring 2006 |
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Children are the largest growing demographic of computer and web users in the nation, and they are quite arguably one of the most diverse demographics in regards to learning and motor abilities. Many industries have been extremely successful at targeting this specific demographic; however the computer industry has largely overlooked it, forcing children to adapt to technologies that were developed for adults. This study focuses on the use of PDAs in an educational setting and proposes guidelines that can be used by designers in order to develop small interfaces that meet the accessibility, cognitive and dexterity needs of young children. |
Kristy Streefkerk Spring 2006 |
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Tetris Weightlifting: An Exploration in Entertainment Fitness For many people, exercise is simply boring, so they turn to devices that can help them keep their minds off what they’re doing while they exercise. Entertainment fitness uses technology to engage users rather than distract them. |
Tim Tucker Spring 2006 |
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