Just Another Teaching of Software Engineering (2006-07)

Software Project: An Introduction

It is really interesting to find a way out of information maze.

An abstract of what you need to do

This project is about the navigation design and information design for a particular subject that interests you. You select a particular subject, analyze the content requirements, and work out the information architecture. Finally, you do the navigation design to facilitate the user’s movement through the information architecture, and design the presentation of information to facilitate understanding.

Some details of what you need to do

First, think about a collection of homogeneous information entities (e.g. Hong Kong secondary schools, web hosting companies in Hong Kong). The collection may contain several hundreds to over one thousand entities. You know that such a large collection of information entities exists, but there is a lack of systems that facilitate easy movement through the information space. You want to make it easy to get an overall picture of the information space.

Second, think a way to do first level categorization of these information entities. For example, in the case of Hong Kong secondary schools, we can easily categorize them by districts.

Third, think about what you can do to further characterize these information entities. You can then tag each entity with a number of keywords (i.e. assign a number of text labels to describe the characteristics of each entity).

Fourth, work out a simple structure to represent these information entities in a uniform way.

Fifth, input the actual data into database based on what you have decided from previous steps.

Sixth, do the visual design, interface design, and navigation design for the information captured in the database.

Seventh, you might find a number of interesting facts out of the information space. Share these by make a clear presentation.

What do you need to submit?

I expect you to submit a project proposal in two months. I will then give you my thoughts on it. After that, you do the design and the implementation. Finally, you deploy your software product and make it accessible to all peer students for sharing, commenting, and voting.

You can do it.

I promise that all of you can complete the project. The possible differences among the students are the quality of the interface design and the values of the software product. I will suggest a content management system, a number of useful programs and scripts for you to do the project. I will also provide all the computing facilitates you may need such as a web server and database server.

It is a competition.

I make the software project a competition. I hope this will encourage your participation and motivate you in some way. At the end, the whole class and I will select a winner, a first-runner up and a second runner-up of the project based on a number of criteria. I will award these three projects with very attractive prizes.

Important Dates

* September 19-20: Study the project idea and the related software tools

* September 26-27: Form your project team and submit the team membership

* October 3-4: Discuss with your team member the project proposal

* October 10-11: Continue discussing the project proposal

* October 17-18: Present your project proposal during class

* October 24-25: Revise your project proposal and submit it

* November 1-2: Start work on design and implementation

* November 28-29: Review your project progress

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