Project Analysis and Design
Due Date: 12:00 noon, Mon, Oct 29, 2019
Analysis
Analysis involves getting a much deeper understanding of the various
factors influencing your project than you did at the proposal stage.
This involves identifying a larger number of sources of information.
Whereas your proposal needed to identify 4 or 5 sources of information
to ensure that your proposal was unique and feasible, your analysis
should identify at least 12 - 20 sources of useful information that
provides you with a sufficiently rich understanding of your topic to
actually do a good project.
Whereas web sites were sufficient for your
proposal, it is expected that you consult scholarly sources for your
analysis. While other non-scholarly publication web sites may provide
you with
useful information, you should not rely solely on the information they
provide or treat it as established fact (remember grade school children
can create web pages).
- Google
, Bing, etc. can help find information prvided by accessibility
organizations, governments, and companies producing products for sale
- Google Scholar can help find academic papers, but many of them are not accessible without paying or using a library such as the UofS Library
The databases accessible through the UofS Library most
likely to have material of interest to us are:
However, there may be other databases that provide more domain specific
information that you should also consult. You may also use Google
Scholar to try and find scholarly papers that relate to your project.
In many cases you will then have to retrieve the papers they identify
by going through the UofS Library's databases.
In addition to researching the topic area, it is also expcted that
yopu will research various software applications that attempt to serve
the topic area.
Please remember the guidelines on academic honesty and use proper
attribution of ideas and sets of words that you have obtained from
these sources. You will be rewarded (and never penalized) for
appropriately using ideas that are properly attributed to others. You
will be severely punished (the University could even expel you) if you
commit plagiarism. As I indicate above, I expect that you identify and
properly use with proper attributions ideas from a sufficiently wide
range of authors.
A good analysis is more than just a set of jot notes and quotations. It
needs to tell a story to the reader and show how the ideas go together.
As you are conducting your research you should be organizing
(and
reorganizing as necessary) your ideas. They then need to be presented
in a clear manner in an appropriate structure that helps convince the
reader that you have gathered and that you understand these materials
and that they can form the basis for your project.
Sometimes diagrams can help convey your meaning. If you choose to use
them don't assume that the reader will understand the message you
expect them to convey and just tell the reader to see figure X. Be sure
to explain how the diagram illustrates the concepts that it is intended
to illustrate.
Observe the rules of good writing. Each major section of your report
should first introduce the reader as to what is coming, before dealing
with ha bunch of details, and then should end with a summary that helps
the reader to understand how the details have worked together to cover
the topic of that section. It is expected that your writing is free of
typos and grammatical errors. If necessary consult the office of the
university that helps with writing or have some friend or family member
proofread you report.
Professor Carter is willing to give you feedback on drafts of your
report, provided that he have at least two days to look it over and
that it is free of typos and grammatical errors. But he will not
provide feedback on drafts in which he finds an excessive number of
these types of errors.
Professor Carter is also willing to answer short e-mail questions that
can be answered by short replies or to arrange a meeting to discuss
more complicated issues.
Design
A good design is more than just a summary of your
analysis. A summary of your analysis belongs at the end of your
analysis and not as an alternative for a proper design.
Design involves planning in detail how to solve the problem
that you
are investigating and describing your solution in a manner that others could make use of.
- For project that involve creating programs (including ADEs and
other types of programs, such as AT), this involves developing
sufficiently detailed design so that someone
else could easily program the system. When
designing an ADE it is important that you provide a complete set of
visual screen designs along with ecplanations of how the user will
interact with the ADE.
- For projects that
involve
creating models, ontologies, methods, methodologies, procedures, guidelines, etc.
it involves actually creating a first version along with a draft of the
rules for its use (if applicable) and documenting the reasons involved
in its creation.
It is important to explain your reasons for each element of your design and thus your design report also should explain why your design is a good solution.
Additionally this section of your report should also include the design of how you will evaluate your design in the next phase of the project.
NOTE: if designing an ADE or other online tool, be sure to include a screen capture of the ADE or other visual user interface.
NOTE: Designs often involve diagrams and accompanying explanations.
Remember that your design also needs to be readable, so the
considerations noted above for an analysis also apply.
Your design should include:
- the reasoning that you used to make use of the information in your analysis (and) to create a suitable design
- details (with BOTH explanations AND diagrams, screen captures, or other illustrations where necessary) of your design
- a detailed plan for how you will evaluate your design
Copyright © 2012, 2019 - Jim A Carter Jr