Take-home question for final examination (CS 4604, Fall 2008)

This question is worth 10 points out of 100 in the final examination.

You work for a company that sells furniture over the web. Your company's website categorises furniture by type, room, price, style and the like. after a customer specifies values for these criteria, the website returns a list of items matching these criteria. Then the customers wade through pages of images of these items to decide what to purchase. Your company wants to try a rather different model on the website. A customer can sketch an image containing a rough design of the item he or she wants to buy. The website will then quickly return items your company sells that match the image. Assume that your first job after you graduate is to solve this problem. We do not expect that you know how to solve this problem. What strategies could you use to find out more about the problem and how to make progress on it? What strategies would you use to evaluate your progress towards solution?

Write your answer in one-two pages of text. You grade will depend on two aspects:

1. The soundness of the plan you propose, including the sources of information you suggest, the different perspectives you bring to bear on the problem, the details you provide on your plan, and how you evaluate progress towards the goal.
2. The clarity and organisation of your answer.