Information Arts & Technologies

Degree Project

The project must be a significant, useful and executable work of application that demonstrates ability to apply professional skills of design and expression, to analyze a problem, to define an audience, and to integrate content, medium, and market. The work may be done in any of a number of media, e.g., digital interactive, audio, video.

Although the project will reflect a primary emphasis on application and problem solving, each project must include a well-developed, reflective written discussion of the background of the problem to be solved, its significance. The problem and your proposed solution must also be placed into its scholarly and professional context through a literature review. Your design solution must be based on user research or user-centered design practices. In all cases, the projects undertaken must have a direct application to the business community, to education, or to government. The project should generally represent at least 600 hours of work.

Here are some sketches of potential projects that students might undertake, intended to make clear the great variety of opportunities:

  1. Libraries are in need of integrated information systems that combine books and journals with vast amounts of information available on line. Such systems must be user-friendly, with transparent organization of information and interface designs that make them easy to use regardless of age, level of education, or degree of technical sophistication. They must be built to enhance the library's role as a community center -- a place where people converse and meet rather than simply exchanging or collecting information. Those working with libraries will need to create such environments -- ones that integrate physical and communal space with virtual and distant spaces. Those designing the information systems must organize the information so that it is easy to find, easy to use, and easy to recall.

  2. As courses are offered using the distance technology of interactive video and the Internet, teachers will need both courseware and strategies for teaching that involve students even when they are not face-to-face with their classmates or their teachers. We will also need to learn how to integrate graphical, aural, and written material without losing the teaching role and without enforcing passivity in students. Those developing these courses will need to develop both the courseware and the strategies to use it.

  3. The new medium will ultimately create a stage for new art forms and for the translation of old art forms into new ones. Poets, playwrights, novelists, designers and animators will find that digital formats provide opportunities to experiment, to create, and to reach new audiences in innovative or traditional ways. Those interested in exploiting the digital media as an expressive form will need to find the right balance between a private voice and vision on one side and a public environment on the other: one that includes the user/player/consumer in an active, participating role.

  4. Government at all levels is now developing ways of communicating to the public and letting the public speak back. At the same time, various governmental agencies are packaging the information they now collect and selling it to the public as a way of supplementing limited budgets. In addition to working through the policy implications of an electronic government, those working in the public sector will need to develop new ways to organize information so that it is easily accessible--while protecting rights of individual privacy.

Timeline:

  • Short project proposal should be signed by the program director and your committee and placed in your file the semester before you plan to register for DCD project credits. If possible, complete this step before registering for proseminar.
  • Take proseminar and complete a formal project proposal.
  • Take your qualifying exam (you must complete the qualifying exam before registering for project credits).
  • During the semester you are registered for thesis/project credits, you are required to submit a weekly email to your project director documenting your progress. You’ll need to copy the program director on this weekly email.
  • Deadlines for fall graduation:
    • Turn in a complete draft of the project to your advisor by September 10
    • Submit a revised and approved version of your project to your full committee by October 15. A decision will be made at this time whether or not to approve your participation in the graduation ceremony for the fall (your advisor must notify the program director).
    • With the approval of your committee, schedule your project defense to occur before December 1. The defense should not occur until the project is presumptively ready for approval.
    • The final project must be signed by the committee and submitted to the library for binding within less than 60 days from the date of the graduation ceremony.
  • Deadlines for spring graduation:
    • Turn in a complete draft of the project to your advisor by February 10
    • Submit a revised and approved version of your project to your full committee by March 20. A decision will be made at this time whether or not to approve your participation in the graduation ceremony for the fall (your advisor must notify the program director).
    • With the approval of your committee, schedule your project defense to occur before May 1. The defense should not occur until the project is presumptively ready for approval.
    • o The final project must be signed by the committee and submitted to the library for binding within less than 60 days from the date of the graduation ceremony.
  • Once the bound copies are returned to the program director, the CS grade for the thesis/project credits will be removed, and the degree will become final.

Download DCD Project Format Requirements