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Project 1: Project Pitches

Learning Goals

  • Identify the partner organizations you would like to do a project with
  • Brainstorm a project idea and present it to the class

Project Context

Welcome to the Celebrating Accessibility Project portion of the course. Until the end of the semester, you will work with a partner organization to design, develop, and evaluate a project. You can do two kinds of projects: an accessibility evaluation and an application solution. The exact project and its goals will emerge from a negotiation with your team and your partner organization.

Project Pitch

To give you practice identifying promising project ideas, you will create a project pitch and present it in class. A project pitch is a formal 2-minute presentation in which you will brainstorm an idea you have for a project with your top-ranked partner organization. It should explain the project along with your skill set to the class and tell them why they should want to work with you to deliver this product to the partner organization. This should be a well-researched idea, one that you would feel comfortable proposing to your partner organization.

Note

You will develop this pitch without doing any user research or discussing the ideas with the partner organization. This is an anomaly for human-centered design. We are allowing this to give you an opportunity to practice pitching ideas before you engage with the partner organization. In addition, this will help us identify the partner organization you are passionate to work with.

You will have a budget of 1 slide (without animation) to be shown on screen as you give your pitch to the class. Your pitch slide must include:

  1. Project title
  2. Your name
  3. The presentation date: October 8, 2024.
  4. Partner organization you're targeting
  5. Problem being solved
  6. Your solution

You may include anything else you would like on the slide. However, be sure to make the slide and your presentation accessible (as we taught you in HW1). As usual, your presentation will be captioned live.

Turn in your pitch slide on Gradescope as a link to Google Slides. Be sure the permissions allow the instructors to access it. We will be copying the contents into a single slide deck for use during the class session. If we cannot copy your slides, we will notify you by DM on Slack the evening prior. You must fix the permissions or you will receive 0 points for the slide portion of the project.

Pitch Presentation

Your presentation may only be 2 minutes long. There will be no questions asked.

Pitches will be presented in alphabetical order by the student's last name, starting with 'A'.

Important

If you cannot be at class in-person on Tuesday, October 8, with prior instructor permission, you may DM the instructors a pre-recorded 2-minute presentation (using your pitch slide as the background image) of your pitch as a private YouTube video link. Pre-recorded presentations are due Monday, October 7, 11:59pm. If you cannot be sure about your attendance, it's best to pre-record your presentation and send it to us just in case.

Your presentation will be evaluated according to three criteria:

  1. Presentation enthusiasm: You need to sound like you actually like the idea you are presenting and that you want others to join you. This can come out through affect in your vocal tone or through the words that you speak. Be deliberate and intentional here. Students in the class will evaluate the enthusiasm of the presentations they watch on a handout everyone will receive at the beginning of class.

  2. Explaining the Problem: You must clearly identify the problem you want to solve, why it is a problem, and why it should be addressed this semester. The instructors will evaluate this criterion.

  3. Justifying the Solution: Your proposed solution should be appropriate to solve the problem and at least appear to be feasible to be completed in 8 weeks by a team of 4-5 students. The instructors will evaluate this criterion.

Deliverables and Deadlines

This is an individual assignment with (3) deliverables. This is worth 10% of your project grade.

A) Pitch Slide - 24 points - due Monday, October 7, 12:00pm

B) Pitch Presentation - 50 points - presented live in class on Tuesday, October 8, 11:00am-12:20pm.

C) Organization Ranking - 10 points - fill out this survey by Wednesday, October 9, 12:00pm to express your preference for partner organizations. If you fill this survey out multiple times, we will take the latest submission as your final response. You will find out what team you have been assigned to by 11:00am Thursday, October 10.