TA03+Proposal+Presentation

= Proposal Presentation =
 * Due: **** Tuesday, March 11th (in class) **

**Note:** everyone should bring their laptops to this class session. ** Don't forget your laptops! ** If you don't have a laptop with Internet access, let me know before the class period. Your phone will not work for this.

= Assignment Overview = In this assignment, you and your teammates will present your project idea and plan to the class in ** seven minutes ** followed by ** two minutes of questions **. We will be timing the presentations and will cut you off if you go over so you must rehearse beforehand.

I encourage you to put together a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint, Google Docs, PDF or some other medium that will work on my laptop (email me in advance if you have any questions). You need not use backing slides at all. Think about creative ways of presenting including skits, video, and audience participation (although it's somewhat hard to do these things with seven minutes of presentation time--be sure you can finish in seven minutes).

To minimize the time between presentations, I ask that you all use my Macbook, and bring your presentation on a flash drive or be able to access it online. I will be in the classroom as early as 8:45 so you can get things loaded and tested before class. If for some reason you do need to use your laptop, let me know in advance and be aware that you have to have a standard VGA port to connect to the projector.

Presentation Order
The presentation order has been determined randomly (using Excel's =Rand function). We will begin promptly at 9:30. If you are the first team, you must arrive by 9:25 and be prepared to present at 9:30 sharp. Because we only have 75 minutes of class, we can only fit 7 presentations into one day, so three teams were randomly selected to make their presentations on Thursday. However, I expect everyone to be ready to present by 9:30 Tuesday morning, so that in the event any of the Tuesday teams are unable to present, Thursday teams will fill in that slot.


 * **Project Proposal Peer Feedback** || **Tuesday, Mar 11** ||
 * [|Review] || Commute - UM, by The Commuters ||
 * [|Review] || Order Up!, by MAGG Development Group ||
 * [|Review] || UMDGPS: UMD Graduation Progress System, by Team Aquila ||
 * [|Review] || Fresh Stats, by Team X ||
 * [|Review] || App to Manage Collectible Card Game Trades, by Team X ||
 * [|Review] || League of Legends, by Team LoLS ||
 * [|Review] || Quest Complete: Making Homework a Game, by Team X ||
 * _ || **Thursday, Mar 13** ||
 * [|Review] || A Mobile Diner Menu, by The A Team ||
 * [|Review] || Improving Project Management through Gamification, by Team Gamigotchi ||
 * [|Review] || Oarcall, by Team  ||
 * [|Peer Evaluations] ||
 * [|Peer Evaluations] ||
 * [|Peer Evaluations] ||

Talk Breakdown
The talks will be ** seven minute presentations plus two minutes Q/A **. Unless you have a very good reason that you clear with me in advance, you must use my laptop to mitigate transaction costs between switching teams (e.g., hooking up various laptops to the projection system which will inevitably fail; see [|law]).

Each presentation must include:
 * 1) A title with tagline
 * 2) An introduction of all team members including names, year in university, and major(s)
 * 3) Problem motivation
 * 4) Problem description
 * 5) A short review of past solutions to problem
 * 6) Your proposed solution and what makes it unique
 * 7) Your target users and how they will benefit from your specific solution
 * 8) A description of your two formative research methods
 * 9) For one of the methods, go a bit deeper and tell us about your participants, your procedure, your data and analysis, and some of your key results.
 * 10) Conclusion

Talk Grading Rubric
Meethu and I will be using a sheet very similar to this for our grading [[|link]].

Reviews
You will be performing reviews as a way to learn from your peers. Please be polite and respectful in your critiques. Malicious, nonconstructive comments will NOT be tolerated. We are all in this together. Let's support each other towards the goal of making our projects the best they can possibly be. You should also fill out feedback for your own team honestly and constructively.

Deliverables
Please upload your talk to the Wiki and post a link in your project page. If you used GDocs for the talk, simply provide a link to the slides.

= Talk Examples = Here are two examples from past classes that were engaging, told an appropriate and convincing story, and followed the instructions appropriately for the assignment (at least in 2012). Note: the assignment criteria was different in 2012 but the examples are useful just the same.

You cannot really get a full sense of a talk simply by viewing the slides (though the slides can, alone, show off primary points, the structure of the talk, speakers attention to detail, aesthetics, etc.). So, you cannot necessarily emulate these presentations exactly without knowing what the speakers did and how they did it. When I'm preparing for a talk, I like to remind myself that one can give an amazing talk without slides but that amazing looking slides don't guarantee a good talk).
 * 1) Example One: [|SafePath].
 * 2) Example Two: [|Alliance] (their slides made the class dizzy and the animation disrupts the flow of the talk--see the the notes below about Prezi--but despite these two things, this team made a very thought-provoking and compelling presentation).

= Presentation Tips =
 * You can use any presentation medium you prefer except for [|Prezi] (see explanation below). Google Docs is fine and I understand this makes collaboration easier but please make sure the slides don't look thrown together at the last minute with randomly placed clip-art and long bullet point lists. And go easy on the clip art. It is usually more of a distraction than a boost to your explanatory power.


 * Why not use Prezi? It takes extreme discipline to use this tool correctly and the novelty of zooming around does not generally enhance the communication (see the second example above). With Prezi, you will spend far too long on senseless animations that will only confuse your audience and take them away from your message--exactly the opposite of what you want from a good talk. I ban Prezi for your own good.


 * Remember, to reduce delays between presentations, we will be presenting off of one single laptop. Thus, if you use a custom font in PowerPoint or Keynote, please make sure that this is loaded onto the presentation laptop before class begins.