Note that you should also use these projects as guides in understanding the scope of the class project. Feel free to propose your own projects via email to me. Include a comparable amount of information as is listed for each of the projects below.
This project asks that you design a set of pages and a set of instructions for adding new pages for the Virginia Tech Art Gallery. Currently they do not have a Web presence, but they would like to increase their visibility for marketing and public relations reasons. Their initial desires for the site include a listing of gallery exhibits, a page of information for the next showing/artist, a list of past shows, and information about their listserv. The site would be included within the Virginia Tech domain as part of the University Unions and Student Activities Web presence.
Class members: Bill Staderman (wstaderm@vt.edu),
Manhar Mayank (mmayank@vt.edu),
Zhiyan Shao (zshao@vt.edu)
Project Link
The Virginia Tech Off Campus Housing Office serves as a resource center for those searching for housing in the New River Valley. Our focus is placed on the students of Virginia Tech. Our office provides a variety of resources and accurate information that allows students to compare housing options to find the one that best suits their needs. These resources include information about apartments, copies of guides and other information, a bulletin board, online and in-office listings, listings from newspapers, and a housing fair. We are looking to update our current website and database for the fall 2002 semester. Feel free to look at the current website at http://www.vtoch.uusa.vt.edu
Class members: Frank LoPinto (flopinto@vt.edu),
Pirot Lertvongkornkit (plertvon@vt.edu),
Bin Li (bili1@vt.edu)
Project Link
Typical chat interfaces work well for informal communication, but the unique challenges of working in group situations are not well supported by traditional chat interfaces. This project will examine the needs of students working in groups in the Virtual School environment in which groups of students within and between classrooms must collaborate on a project. Your challenge will be to design an interface to support their needs in completing a class project.
Class members: Mahesh Babu Mungara (mmungara@vt.edu)
Phani Aytam,
Vamsee Samantham,
Arun Nayar
Project Link
The Squires Student Center wants to create a new look to better promote the services that they offer. Along with typical information like hours of operation, they want a photo-intensive site that highlights things like the lounges, meeting spaces, food services, banking, vending, and the many centers housed in Squires. They are interested in perhaps having a Virtual Tour of Squires, but it will be up to your project team to determine whether this is appropriate.
Class members: Ganesh Panchanathan (gpanchan@vt.edu),
Kunal Garach (kgarach@vt.edu),
Narayanan Kodiyalam,
Reuben Johnson
Project Link
The Squires Student Center wants to have a handheld assistant to help people navigate through Squires, find offices and stores of interest, and learn about the organizations centered in Squires. The contact has maps and layouts of Squires, and it will be up to your team to use this information in an appropriate way to develop an application to help people accomplish their tasks.
Class Members: Pardha Pyla (ppyla@vt.edu),
Satish Tadepalli (satesh@vt.edu),
Siddharth Mahapatra (simahapa@vt.edu),
Prachi Bora (pbora@vt.edu),
Vedavyas Duggirala (vduggira@vt.edu)
Project Link
The Johnston Student Center wants to have a new home page that includes information about customer services, student employment, food services, ATMs, stores, lounges, and meeting areas. Dallas Cass has a number of ideas about what he wants on the site and even how he wants it to look, but it will be up to your group to identify the best look for the target audience.
Class members: none yet
There are several diverse organizations that fall under the student activities categories, including budget board funding, Greek life, parents page, and student organization forms, as well as other groups that already have Web pages. The goal in this project is to design pages for each of the four groups above as well as a main page that summarizes the student activities goals.
Class members: David McPherson (dmcphers@vt.edu),
Rishi Pande (rpande@vt.edu),
Bolan Linghu (blinghu@vt.edu),
Hermanpreet Singh (hsingh@vt.edu)
Project Link
Recommender systems provide recommendations based on preferences of others. This project will examine the unique needs in designing a recommender system for a handheld computer to be used when at a video store looking for a movie video
Class members: Akella Shalini (sakella@vt.edu),Luktuke Rohan(rluktuke@vt.edu),Madhok Kartik(kmadhok@vt.edu),Shirhatikar Tejas(tshirhat@vt.edu),Tauro Candida(ctauro@vt.edu)
Project Link
As wearable computer systems and helmet/head mounted displays (HMD) increase in popularity, there is an increasing need to properly evaluate such displays to establish design guidelines and tradeoffs. Previous work indicates secondary or peripheral task displays, which only receive partial user focus, not only introduce distraction to a primary task but also do not convey information as well as identically designed focal displays. Secondary task or peripheral attribute orderings also appear to be different from established focal orderings. These two facts motivate the establishment of secondary/peripheral display properties. However, to best accomplish this type of research and ensure greatest generalizability of results, test platforms should be used that simulate target system use as best as possible in a lab environment. To our knowledge, no current system at Virginia Tech accommodates experimental testing of peripheral information display attributes and features in an immersive, realistic setting. An experimental platform must be created to accomplish this.
Class members: Christa Chewar(cchewar@vt.edu),Ali Ndiwalana (andiwala@vt.edu), Satyajit Singh (not in cs5714) (sasingh1@vt.edu)
Project Link
Our primary aim in conducting the application development would be to consider the usability principles and guidelines and apply them specifically to hand-held devices. We believe that a portable device, such as a PDA, imposes a sufficient challenge with regards to the issues of usability, as appropriate information presentation is essential considering the limited space available for display. We also hope to study devices supporting the X10 protocol, which we believe will become ubiquitous in the years to come.
Class members: Vikrant Colaso (vcolaso@vt.edu),Anuj Shah (foranuj@vt.edu), Mudita Singhal(msinghal@vt.edu), Rajat Sud (rsud@vt.edu)
Project Link