Term Project Specs

Term projects for this class will take one of the following forms:

1. Analysis of an existing product
2. Proposal for design strategies
3. Design a user study
4. Some other project that you propose.

Note If you are planning to count this ling 575 as a linguistics elective (rather than compling), please consult with me about designing a project that is sufficiently engaged with linguistic analysis.

For the "design a user study" option, the information you'd need to collect to apply for IRB approval and/or do a preregistered report is roughly the level of detail I'm looking for.

Paper

• Abstract: State the product/design strategy discussed and your main conclusions.
• Introduction: Briefly overview the questions you are approaching, summarize the main conclusions, and give an overview of the paper.
• Background/related work:
  • Present, with citations, the framework you are using for your analysis
  • Describe in sufficient detail the product or design question you are considering
  • Discuss any related work looking similar questions
• Methodology: Describe what you did; describe any data sets you used
• Results: Present what you found
• Discussion: Apply your analysis framework to your results, describe your recommendations
• Ethical Considerations: What potential for harm does this project have, and how can such harm be mitigated?
• Conclusion: Summarize the main points and provide look ahead. What should happen next?
• Acknowledgments: Acknowledge any help you received (e.g. thoughtful feedback from classmates, help from developers to run their software)
• Bibliography: References for all papers cited in the text. Does not count towards/against the page requirements. It is expected that your bibliography will include assigned readings from the class as well as additional readings specific to your term project.

Milestones

To help you with this term paper, there will be several milestones along the way:

1. 4/24 Project proposal: 1/2-1 page describing what you plan to do
2. 5/8 Paper outline: Fill in the sections above (or modify, if somethign there doesn't fit) with bullet points specific to your paper.
3. 5/22 Paper draft
4. 5/30 Comments on peer's paper draft
5. 6/8 Final paper