COS 333 Project: Final Submission Information

Sat May 11 08:19:50 EDT 2019

Here are the remaining things you have to do. Hang in -- the end is very near!

May 12 (Sunday): Final submission

Your final submission must include

• most important: access to a working version of your system so we can test it.

  If your system involves a special device like a smartphone, you will have to schedule times when TAs and instructors can play with your system. We will arrange blocks of times when the TAs will be available to experiment with your systems.

• a link to your ongoing web site
• access to your Github repository so we can see what you actually did
• a report on how things worked out and what you learned
• a product guide for users and potential future developers

Here's what you will have to do:

Submission:

Submit your project on Tigerfile at https://tigerfile.cs.princeton.edu/COS333_S2019/project.

The submission must include the following files with EXACTLY these names, all lower case:

• A standard first page called index.html that looks exactly like this template. This page must refer to the other components of the documentation as shown. It must include the "elevator speech" description, a single paragraph that states clearly and succinctly what your system does. It must tell us how to access a working version of your project so we can experiment. This is very important, so make sure that what you tell us here is correct and that your system really is accessible. Feel free to ask us to check ahead of time.

  This page should also link to your project's home page, which presumably includes a product description, screen shots, tutorial sequences, etc. This is the part that explains to potential customers or users what's neat about your project. The content and format are up to you, but try to make it informative and seductive. This is probably either the landing page for your system or the page that you have been keeping up to date so far.

• A productguide.pdf (5-6 pages) that provides an overview of the system aimed at two targets: its typical end users, and its hypothetical continued developers and maintainers. The "user guide" portion should describe what the system does and how to get it to do what it does -- relatively simple installation instructions, and the features content typical of a non-technical user's manual. The "developer guide" portion should describe the internal structure of your system in intermediate depth, as though for a professional engineer taking over your project. Help them to understand how the system is put together, in an orderly and compact description, without getting mired in lowest-level details. The document should provide a good working description of the system and its implementation, but not a line-by-line walkthrough of the code. This also is the place where you acknowledge the software systems and other resources that you used but did not create.

• A final report report.pdf (5-6 pages) that describes how well the project worked out. How did your milestones go? What was your experience with design, interfaces, testing, etc.? What surprises, pleasant or otherwise, did you encounter on the way? What choices did you make that worked out well or badly? What would you like to do if there were more time? How would you do things differently next time? What should next year's class learn from your experience? Imagine that you are writing this document for your (friendly!) boss or professor and want to explain what you learned that could be applied to the next project.

• You can also include links to your demo material like a Powerpoint presentation, etc., or you can upload them; it will help us to refresh our memories.

Documentation should be written in good English, free of spelling and grammar errors. It should be thorough but not exhaustive; the total submitted documentation should not exceed about 15 printed pages. The report is the most important piece of documentation. We are particularly interested in thoughtful and interesting reports, so don't skimp on this part, though I think an upper limit of 5-6 pages is about right. Reports that speak for the whole group with a single voice seem to work out better than those with one part written by each team member, but it's not a big deal and it's entirely up to you.

A working system: We will be experimenting with your system starting on May 13, so you must provide access to a running version. If the system is web-based, make sure it's up and running and we have whatever passwords and other controls are necessary to play with the system; that includes administrative rights if part of the functionality involves administration, though we will try to be very careful not to intrude or break things. (We will still worry about external security vulnerabilities like SQL injection, of course.)

You should test carefully to ensure that someone not in your group can exercise all aspects of the system, working only from the information in your submission.

It will be a great help if you follow these directions and try to make it easy for us to look at and play with your project. If things go well, we tend to be happy; if things go badly, we get grumpy. Happy graders tend to give better grades.

May 15 (Tuesday, Dean's Date): Peer ratings

Grading

• 10% for planning, prototype, alpha, and beta
  • schedules met? evidence of thinking and planning? plausible assessments of time and effort? reasonable division of code and labor? good teamwork and cooperation? adequate functionality along the way?
• 20% demo
  • well organized / rambling, somewhat disorganized / no evidence of organization
  • clear overview and motivation / leaps right in to details / no overview or motivation
  • good examples to illustrate the system / weak or excessively complicated examples / too much mousing around, lost in details
  • apparently works most of the time / occasional glitches / major glitches / clearly broken
  • smooth presentation, evidence of rehearsal / scattered, not sure what comes next / lots of interrupting each other
  • good graphics, easy to read / too much on slides, too small to read, poor colors, wrong screen size / handwritten on blackboard
  • uses allotted time well / runs overtime
  • good answers to questions / weak answers
• 50% functionality
  • effort: clearly the result of sustained hard work / a suitable amount of work / little evidence of effort or care
  • operation: works almost flawlessly / mostly works, occasional glitches / sort of works, awkward / easily broken, can't tell if it works, hangs, crashes
  • user interface: consistent; intuitive, natural and easy to use / occasional pitfalls and unobvious uses / awkward, unintuitive, often confusing to use
  • appearance: polished and professional / mundane and pedestrian / little attention to appearance
  • submission: complete and correct / wrong file names or directories, broken links / major installation or access problems, or major missing pieces
• 20% documentation
  • product guide: appealing, attractive / straightforward listing of features / sloppy, careless
  • report: real insight, thoughtful, informative / straightforward "this is what we did" / repetitive; uncoordinated sections / little evidence of thought or effort
  • writing: very good, clear, interesting, fun to read / acceptable, straightforward / murky, ponderous / excessive grammar errors, spelling mistakes and typos