Final Projects
The Final Project Assignment Prompt (PDF, 1 page) describes your final project.
Updated to reflect revised deadline.
The Final Project Proposal Template (.docx, 1 page) should be used to write your final project proposal.
Final Project Fair
2175/2185 North Quad (these rooms are adjacent)
Wednesday, April 27
10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Instructions:
- IMPORTANT: Before Wednesday morning, COMPLETE THIS FORM to list your final project's final title: http://goo.gl/forms/Y1eB24xs9o (UM login required). This will be printed on the program and passed out during the fair. We use this title to understand what your project is about when we grade it. Your project title does not need to match your earlier submission on the project proposal. (Optional: See what project titles people have entered in this form so far [UM login required]).
- Reminder: Your files must be uploaded to Canvas by Wednesday morning at 9:30 a.m., one hour before the final project fair. See the final project assignment prompt (PDF above this list) for more information and for the list of required files.
- The final project fair will be held in 2175/2185 North Quad (these rooms are adjacent), on Wednesday, April 27 from 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. We recommend you arrive 10 minutes early to ensure you can start your demo promptly if you are in the first round. Plan to be present for this entire period. Although it is possible we will be finished early, to be safe I would not count on it.
- The fair will be open to the public and we will have bagels in case you would like to invite a friend.
- You will show your work on a laptop sitting on a table and not on the room's projector screen. Please bring one laptop computer per project, WITH A FULLY CHARGED BATTERY. Although there are power outlets in the room, to be safe I would not count on being near them. If you wish, you can share one laptop between two projects if the two projects are in different presentation rounds (round 1 vs. round 2). Here is a list of who is in which final project presentation round: https://umich.instructure.com/files/1556022/download (Excel spreadsheet, UM login required)
- During your presentation round, be prepared to give an informal demo of your final project that is no more than 3 minutes in length. Your demo helps us understand your project when we review the files you uploaded -- please show us what you did! All demos will be seen by either Kitior, me, or both. In addition, you will demo your project for other people and our distinguished guest judge when they walk up to you.
- During the round when you are not presenting, you will act as an interested and constructive audience member and provide feedback/vote on your favorite project. The winner has a chance to receive a framed picture of Sir Tim Berners-Lee or other prizes.
- I'm delighted to announce that our distinguished guest judge will be Erin Molnar. (Her opinions -- although valuable -- will not have any bearing on grades in the course, and are a source of extra feedback only.) I've attached a bio.
- For your final project to count as turned-in, you must demo it and you must act as an audience member for other projects.
Distinguished Guest Judge Erin Molnar Bio:
Erin Molnar is Project Manager at ON24, a cloud-based virtual event platform headquartered in San Francisco. She specializes in digital marketing, social media marketing and digital analytics and she has worked with clients like VMware, Toyota, Nestle, and Johnson & Johnson. She previously worked as a marketing program manager at Google, was the social media voice of Ford Trucks and Etch A Sketch at Team Detroit, and was an account executive at The Mars Agency. She received a B.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Michigan in 2010 and worked on both the advertising and writing staffs for The Michigan Daily (at separate times!) She's a big Michigan Radio fan, and her favorite Comm Studies fangirl moment was a guest lecture by Jack Lessenberry.
Suggestions are welcome for the COMM 313 soundtrack (to be played at the final project fair).
Topic Templates and Examples
- Make a Dynamic Web Site. Assignment #2 produced a very simple Web site. You can extend this assignment by teaching yourself the Bootstrap framework (including JavaScript and dynamic HTML) and producing a near-professional-quality responsive Web site.(*)
- (EXAMPLE for Make a Dynamic Web Site:) A member of a student group re-designed the group's simple Web site using Bootstrap. The revised Web site dynamically changed to present a better user experience for the user's screen size. It included interactive features like collapsable/expandable panels, slideshows, tooltips, and modal dialogs.
- Make a Complex Game/Story. Assignment #3 produced a simple game in Scratch. You can extend this assignment by producing a more elaborate game or interactive story, as long as this involves teaching yourself material about Scratch that was not covered in Assignment #3.
- (EXAMPLE for Make a Complex Game/Story:) A fan of the movie Drive made a video game in Scratch based on the movie's story. His/her code included new programming techniques like advanced use of events and recursion.
- Process a Feed. Use your knowledge from the Feeds assignment (#4) to produce/export an RSS feed from some online platform. Then pass the feed to a Processing sketch (Assignment #5) to visualize it or represent it in an interesting way. Finally, embed the processing sketch on a public Web page (Assignment #2).
- (EXAMPLE for Process a Feed:) A twitter fan used the feeds assignment to make a feed of certain Twitter accounts, read that feed into a Processing program, then visualized the account activity.
- Program a Physical Object. Use your knowledge of either Scratch (Assignment #3) or Processing (Assignment #5) to make an Arduino device that allows you to sense or control objects in the physical world without a laptop or desktop computer.
- (EXAMPLE for Program a Physical Object:) A student used an Arduino kit to build and program the behavior of an LED mood light. The pattern and colors of the lights were set using Scratch and S4A.
- Design Interactive Visual Art. Extend your knowledge of Processing (Assignment #5) to cover additional material beyond the assignment (this could include new libraries or extensions). Use these skills to create an interactive visual artwork.
- (EXAMPLE for Interactive Visual Art:) A student used Processing and a laptop camera to make an abstract artwork intended to be projected on a white wall. The artwork changed based on movement in the room, showcasing the use of advanced geometric patterns.
(*) -- If you choose this template, you must use JavaScript (or another programming language) to meet the programming requirement of the final project -- markup languages like HTML and CSS do not meet the programming requirement.
Inspiring Examples
- Dynamic Web Sites
- Bootstrap Expo
- Time-Saving Bootstrap Examples
- Simple JQuery Examples
- Topic: Responsive Design
- Intro to Bootstrap (video)
- Free Bootstrap Themes
- Scratch
- Advanced Scratch Project Studio
- Using Scratch to Programmatically Compose Music
- Drawing Fractals With Recursion
- Recursion
- RPG Scratch Project Studio
- Processing
- The OpenProcessing Art Repository
- Generative Audio and Visuals (video)
- Processing Tutorials
- Jer Thorp's Additional Processing Tutorials
- Feeds
- "Just Landed" Twitter Visualization (video)
- Using the Twitter API with Processing
- Processing Data Visualization Sketches
- Program a Physical Object
- Artists Experimenting with PicoBoard and Physical Sensors (esp. 0:59+ -- Easy.)
- 10 Great Arduino Projects for Beginners (especially the Mood Light and Ambilight) (Intermediate.)
- A Glowing LED Cube that Visualizes any Data From the Web (Hard.)
- A Light that Looks Up the Weather Report on the Internet and Changes Color to Indicate It Will Rain (Hard.)
Help Your Classmates
If you find an excellent resource online that helped you with this assignment, share it with the instructors so that it can be added here for future students!