The Masters project is a blend of research and design efforts intended as an assessment of knowledge and skills acquired throughout the program. There is freedom for great diversity in project topics and options for investigating, designing, and/or developing artifacts that are relevant to HCI. Artifacts can be physical, digital, process/method, knowledge, or combinations of these forms (and perhaps others). Because there is a range of acceptable project contexts, your project may not follow a “typical” project path. However, students must take a user-centered perspective as well as ensure that they interact with individuals in the target user group, appropriate representative users, and/or stakeholders during the project. All projects are required to demonstrate evidence-based decision making from start to finish. Therefore, a critical objective is for students to engage in activities that generate evidence to inform and reflect on design or knowledge that is relevant to HCI.
The most common approach is to focus on designing and evaluating an artifact (software, hardware, conceptual framework of behavior, service process, etc.) based on the needs/wants of a specific group of people. Projects generally start with needs analysis or discovery activities in order to investigate the problem or design space, identify user needs, and define design criteria. This "research" can take many forms, and may be lightweight or more thorough, depending on the specific project. Next, students enter an ideation phase that includes pitching, sketching, storyboarding, and/or wireframing to demonstrate and get feedback on their concepts. There may be some additional formative research and design efforts, in order to iteratively refine the prototype. The final (or most advanced) prototype must be evaluated to validate your design decisions and suggest improvements.
