CSC 591–005: Home Page

Instructor Information

Instructor:		Christopher G. Healey
Contact:		2266 EB-II, healey@ncsu.edu
Office Hours:		10:30-11:30 M, or by appointment

TA:		Tony Chen
TA Contact:		1211F EB-II, stchen@ncsu.edu
TA Office Hours:		9:30-10:30 Th, or by appointment

Assignment and Presentation Schedule

Project design document, due January 20 in class
Revised project design document, due January 27 in class
Design document presentation, week of January 30
Milestone 1 presentation, week of February 13
Milestone 2 presentation, week of March 12
Milestone 3 presentation, week of April 2
Milestone 4 presentation, week of April 23

The following schedule will be used for the design document and milestone presentations. See the instructions on the course project (below) for full details on how presentations will be run and graded.

Design Document		Milestone 1		Milestone 2		Milestone 3		Milestone 4
Jan. 30	Group 1 Group 2 Group 3	Feb. 13	Group 4 Group 5 Group 6	Mar. 12	Group 7 Group 8	Apr. 2	Group 4 Group 5 Group 6	Apr. 23	Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
Feb. 1	Group 4 Group 5 Group 6	Feb. 15	Group 7 Group 8	Mar. 14	Group 1 Group 2 Group 3	Apr. 4	Group 7 Group 8	Apr. 25	Group 4 Group 5 Group 6
Feb. 3	Group 7 Group 8	Feb. 17	Group 1 Group 2 Group 3	Mar. 16	Group 4 Group 5 Group 6	Apr. 6	Group 1 Group 2 Group 3	Apr. 27	Group 7 Group 8

Group 1: Sridharan, Sridhar, Arjun
Group 2: Khatri, Jeffers
Group 3: Bhagwat, Ranade
Group 4: Nagar, Badrinarayanan, Ramaswamy
Group 5: Muralidharan, Raghuraman, Rajamannar
Group 6: Muppalla, Srinivasan, Iyengar
Group 7: Batts, McKee, Ocampo
Group 8: Dominguez, Jin

Introduction

This course provides an introduction to mobile phone technology, and experience designing and implementing graphics and user interfaces in a limited display and input environment. My goals for you are to:

gain an understanding of the basic hardware and software designs used in modern smartphones,
explore graphics and interface design decisions and tradeoffs on modern smartphones, and
gain experience designing and implementing an application with significant graphics and/or UI requirements using Android OS.

Textbooks

There are no textbooks for this course. All material will be presented in class. For tutorials on how to program in the Android environment, students are directed to the Android developers web site:

This site includes instructions on how to install Eclipse and the Android SDK, as well as descriptions of Android's APIs, and basic examples of different types of Android programs. Here are links to example programs that may be useful as starting points for your projects.

Course Overview

Below is a tentative course schedule. Please note that time frames for each topic will be confirmed in class and are subject to possible changes.

Historical Overview
Hardware
- ARM
- Intel Atom
- PowerVR
- NVIDIA Tegra
- Qualcomm Adreno
Display
- LCD
- OLED
- subpixel arrangement
Touchscreen
- resistive
- capacitive
- infrared
Camera
- sensors
- colour
- backside illumination and IR filtering
- focal length and aperture
- HDR
Operating Systems
- Android OS
- iOS
- Windows Phone 7
- BlackBerry OS
- Symbian OS
- webOS
Graphics
- OpenGL ES
- XNA
- Unity 3d
- Unreal Engine 3
Text Entry
- physical keyboard
- handwriting recognition
- virtual keyboard
- keyboard configurations
- gesture input
- predictive entry
- chording
Menus
- radial menus
- smartphone menus
- icons
Navigation

wayfinding
GPS navigation

Non-Traditional Input Modalities
- GPS
- accelerometers and gyroscopes
- voice input

Schedule of Reading Assignments

Apart from material in the textbook related to individual lectures, no additional readings will be assigned. Students will be informed in class which topics will be covered during that class’s lectures.

Course Project

The graded material of this course is a full semester project, completed by groups of 2–3 students, and a final exam. Student groups will be defined in one of two ways. If you have a preference for a group, submit the names of your group members to me by the end of class on Friday, Jan. 13. Otherwise, I will assign all remaining students to separate groups. Group composition will be announced Monday, Jan. 16, in class.

Each group will be responsible for choosing a topic for their course project. Because this course focuses on graphics and interface for limited-capability devices and environments, your project is required to have a significant graphics or UI component. So, it would not be appropriate, for example, to propose to re-implement a simplified version of Android's contact list as your course project. Possible topics could include (but are not limited to):

games,
visualization,
improved input methods for common interactions or an existing application, or
improved interface for an existing application.

The following items will be submitted and/or presented on the following dates:

Project design document, January 20, in class:
Submit a design document describing your proposed project, its scope, its intended user group, background to explain the project, project objectives, and what you will have completed at each of four milestones:
- Milestone 1, progress to be presented in class week of February 13
- Milestone 2, progress to be presented in class week of March 12
- Milestone 3, progress to be presented in class week of April 2
- Milestone 4, progress to be presented in class week of April 23
We have made available an example design document for an Asteroids game to show you the topics, level of detail, and project scope you are expected to include. As part of grading the design document, we will offer requirements and/or suggestions about modifying the scope of your project. So, if you haven't proposed enough work, we will require you to extend the scope of your project. If, on the other hand, we think you're being too ambitious, we will suggest that you reduce the scope of your project. Modified design documents must be submitted to us on or before Jan. 27's class.

Regardless of our attempts to help you choose an appropriate project scope, we strongly encourage you to think very carefully about your project and the milestones you propose. Consider the design document a contract between your group and us about what you will provide at each of the milestone dates. You will be graded based on how well you achieve the deliverables you specify for each milestone. Apart from extenuating circumstances, you will not be able to significantly modify your milestone deliverables after the Jan. 27 resubmission deadline (e.g., you will not be able to come and tell us, "Well, turns out this is more work than we expected, so we're going to have to significantly scale back what we can deliver, and we want to be marked on this new, reduced set of milestones.")

Both the initial and the revised design document must be submitted in HTML using Moodle. As noted above, the deadlines for submission are in-class (no later than 10:30am) January 20 and January 27, respectively.
Presentations:
Each group will present in class five times during the semester:
- week of January 30, design document presentation
- week of February 13, Milestone 1 progress presentation
- week of March 12, Milestone 2 progress presentation
- week of April 2, Milestone 3 progress presentation
- week of April 23, Milestone 4 progress presentation
Individual group members will receive two grades as part of the project presentations: a presentation grade, and a participation grade.

Each group member is required to do one of the five presentations independently. Your presentation mark will be based on this presentation. Group members can choose when each member will do their individual presentation. The remaining presentations can be completed individually or as a group, and will not be marked (e.g., for a 3-person group, three of the presentations will be completed by an individual group member, and marked to determine that group member's presentation grade; the remaining two presentations will not be marked, and can be completed by any number of group members).

Presentations will be 10 minutes in length, with 5 minutes at the end of the presentation for questions and for switching between presenting groups. You will be marked based on the quality of your presentation, how well your presentation conforms to the time limits we've imposed (note, if your presentation runs over 10 minutes, we will unfortunately need to stop you and mark you on the material you were able to present), and your ability to answer questions.

We will choose the order that each group will present prior to each presentation period. Presentation order will be posted on the course web page immediately after group membership is finalized.

All students are expected to be present at, and participate in, all of the presentations made by other groups. Your participation mark will be based on your attendance for other groups' presentations, and the level of quality of comments and/or questions you pose at these presentations.

The course will also include a final exam that covers all material presented in class during the semester. The university has scheduled our class's final exam for 8:00–11:00am Wednesday, May 2.

Grading

Grades for the course will be made up from your initial design document submission, your individual presentation, your participation, how well your group meets each of your four milestone deliverables, and your final exam. Final grades will be calculated as follows, using +/- grading:

Group-based grades
- design document, 10%
- milestone 1 deliverables, 10%
- milestone 2 deliverables, 10%
- milestone 3 deliverables, 10%
- milestone 4 deliverables, 10%
Individual grades
- presentation, 15%
- participation, 10%
- final exam, 25%

Because of the group-based nature of the class, audits in CSC 595-005 are not permitted.

Late or Missed Assignments

Missed assignments, presentations, and exams cannot be made up without an official university excuse. Contact me as soon as possible if you need to discuss reasons for late or missed assignments, presentations, or exams.

Class Absences

If you miss (or plan to miss) class(es), contact me as soon as possible to identify the material to be covered during your absence. You are expected to "make up" the material by reading the appropriate section(s) in the textbook, and meeting with me as necessary to discuss the material.

Prerequisites

Students enrolled in CSC 591-005 must be registered as a computer science (CSC) major. You must have previously completed EITHER CSC 554 (Graduate HCI) OR CSC 562 (Graduate Computer Graphics) with at C+ or higher. If you have taken an HCI or graphics course at a different institution and you believe that course covers the CSC 554/CSC 562 material, you can submit a syllabus to me for evaluation. If you do not meet the CSC major or CSC 554/CSC 561 prerequisites, your registration in CSC 591–005 will be cancelled. You must also be proficient in Java, and have the ability to develop and manage moderately-sized software programs.

Academic Integrity

The university provides a detailed policy on academic integrity. This policy can be found in the Code of Student Conduct. It is understood that when you sign and submit your homework, term project, and final exam, you are implicitly agreeing to the university honor pledge: "I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this test or assignment."

Academic dishonesty (e.g., cheating or plagiarism) will not be tolerated under any circumstances. If you are having difficultly with any part of the course material, please see me or the TA as soon as possible. I will do everything I can to help you with any course-related problems you may be having. If you are found to be guilty of academic dishonesty, however, I will then do everything I can to see that you are punished as forcefully as possible. This may include asking to have you suspended or expelled from the course, the program, and/or the university. At the very least, you will receive -50% for the assignment or exam in question, and your name will be placed on record with the university as having committed an academic offence (multiple offences during your academic career will result in suspension or expulsion from the university). I take absolutely no pleasure in pursuing cases of academic misconduct, and would ask that you please do not put me in this position.

Students With Disabilities

All effort will be made to ensure that no students with disabilities are denied any opportunity to successfully complete this course. If you have specific requirements that need to be addressed, please contact me immediately. Possible changes can include (but are not necessarily limited to) rescheduling classes from inaccessible to accessible buildings, or providing access to auxiliary aids such as tape recorders, special lab equipment, or other services such as readers, note takers, or interpreters. This may also include oral or taped tests, readers, scribes, separate testing rooms, or extension of time limits.