Authentic Capstone Projects
This semester, you'll experience an authentic capstone project by integrating real-world research problems from the Temple University Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Lab, moving beyond traditionally self-chosen projects. It's important to understand that the goal of this course is not to conduct research or to learn research methods, but rather to focus on the software engineering aspects of developing these systems. Your technical contribution and creativity will come from applying your problem-solving skills and technical creativity to build these significant software systems. To emulate industry experiences, research leads from the HCI Lab will act as external stakeholders, providing feedback and navigating requirements, much like clients in a professional setting. See projects section for information on project details, topics, and stakeholders. These projects are chosen to be "resume-worthy" and will give you hands-on experience in the software development lifecycle, preparing you for the industry. You are encouraged to be flexible with programming languages and technologies such as JavaScript, Python, React, Next.js, and Docker, choosing what best fits your project rather than sticking to familiar languages if they are not the optimal choice.
These projects are not hypothetical; they are real systems that will be used by actual users. Your work will have a tangible impact, and you will gain experience in dealing with real-world constraints and requirements. This is great opportunity to differentiate your portfolio and show off your skills. You'll standout more in the job market than having multiplayer tetris as your senior project.
You will interact with stakeholders throughout the course, gaining insight into real-world project requirements and feedback processes. Stakeholder's visits may vary making attendance on these days essential.
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| From Sketch to Screen Rahad Arman Nabid | A collaborative UI design tool tailored for non-programmers. It allows multiple users to sketch interfaces, render designs in real time, finalize CSS, and specify page interactions—all without needing coding skills. |
| Collaborative Agent Rahad Arman Nabid | An AI-powered system to support student programming teams. It helps form teams, allocate tasks, enable simultaneous coding, provide real-time feedback, and suggest improvements based on peer reviews. |
| AAC API Cindy Zastidil | Games where augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices are used as controllers for the game is promising for increasing social inclusion of children who use these devices, such as minimally verbal autistic children. We want to build out an API which supports audio-controlled games where the output from an AAC device is automatically converted into game actions. |
| Predictive Anchoring Cindy Zastidil | Predictive anchoring is a conceptual design which makes grid displays, a kind of high-tech AAC device, more learnable and quicker to use by leveraging techniques that people use to learn language. Word predictions are provided on a word or folder of words to anchor the suggestions to words they are related to. This technique may make it easier for users of grid displays to communicate quicker and develop more advanced language skills. |
| Highlighting Cindy Zastidil | Just as smartphone users are provided with intelligent text prediction when they are composing text messages, we want to enable that functionality in AAC devices. By using different levels of opacity we can direct users' attention to the words which may be of the most interest to them. |