This document describes the capstone semester project for the course. Students should work on a project in teams of 2 or 3 people. (Arguments will be entertained for a single person project.) Expectations will be adjusted according to group size.

The idea of the project is to take the knowledge and background that you are learning this semester about Information Visualization and put it to good use in a new, creative effort. A real key to the project, however, is to select a data set that people will find interesting and intriguing. Even better would be to select a data set with a clearly identified set of "users" or "analysts" who care deeply about that data. Select a topic that people want to know more about!

This term our focus will be world/government/political data. Our class t-square site will contain a resources page with links to possible data collections or actual data collections themselves. Explore these collections and find something that interests you as a group and that you feel will interest others. You are always free to propose othr topics, but you must run them by me to be approved.

No matter what topic you choose, I am expecting a high-quality project. In particular, I'm seeking creative projects showcasing interesting ideas. A good project should consist of visualization designs and a software artifact that implements the designs. Interaction is key in information visualization, and it is difficult to understand the interaction issues in your project without a running system. I am explicitly NOT expecting user testing and evaluation. Ideally, I would like your efforts to be innovative and to result in some form of potential publication.

You are free to choose any software development environment and graphics/visualization support library that you want. Consider building a system that is web-deployable so that your system can be shown to everyone in the world!

You will have four main milestones or deliverables. First, you must form your team and settle on a topic. Second, you will submit a detailed design summary about halfway through the term. Third, you will make a final presentation about your project during the last week of class. Finally, the software system you build will be delivered to us, along with a short write-up desciring the problem and solution.

Important Milestones: