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• INFO-I 494 Design and Development of an Information System

INFO-I 494 Design and Development of an Information System

3 credits

• Prerequisites: Consent of instructor
• Delivery: Arranged

System design and development present both technical and managerial problems with which students will be familiar from their undergraduate course work. This course puts these lessons into practice as students work to develop an information system. This course provides students with a high-level design and development experience that allows them to integrate the knowledge and skills they have developed during the program.

Learning Outcomes

1. Analyze a problem, including identifying and evaluating alternatives, then execute a solution.
2. Create an information system, for which student applies knowledge and skills according to industry’s best practices and standards.
3. Manage time and meet deadlines to fulfill project expectations.
4. Document assets, code, and media created for the project weekly.
5. Reflect on the capstone experience regarding the impact on self, school, campus, community, and future career choices.
6. Recognize the importance of planning for professional development beyond post-secondary education.
7. Present their final work at the capstone event.

Faculty Advisors

Ideally, you want to work with a faculty whose expertise aligns with your academic interests, experience, and career path. Faculty availability is not guaranteed, depending on the faculty’s other assignments and duties. Plan your capstone early and thoroughly. Here is the list of faculty advisors in the Informatics program.

Fawzi BenMessaoud, Ph.D.

Students are given the opportunity to select from real-world or from various community organizations projects. The students are mentored on how to best apply all their acquired skills, academic knowledge, and use of the Systems Development Life Cycles (SDLCs) and sound Informatics project management to scope, design, develop, and present their completed project. Students are mentored mainly in two types of Capstone projects; (1) Digital Transformation (DX) and the design, development, use, and leverage of Technology and Computing to harness the power of the data to solve problems or explore opportunities in all aspects of our lives, including software development, technology integration, the use of APIs with apps and web applications, and data analytics and visualization; (2) The applications of modern Ai models and bot platforms such as the implementation of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to deploy a digital workforce or the implementation of cognitive bots to improve the user interface/experience (UI/UX) and increase the throughputs in business, organization, and technology by improving user experience and business insights.

Erin Brady, Ph.D.

Students will identify real-world accessibility problems or issues through direct interaction with people with disabilities, and then develop an information system as the solution to solve the problems or address the issues. Students will be responsible for identifying participants with disabilities, conducting formative research using ability-appropriate data collection methods, developing personas or portraits to represent participant needs, and then generating accessible design artifacts and soliciting user feedback. Prerequisites:  INFO-I481 Experience Design and Evaluation of Access Technologies.

Francesco Cafaro, Ph.D.

Students will collaborate in the activities of the Interactive Embodied Spaces (IES) Laboratory. They will contribute to the design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive data visualizations for informal learning. Activities will be coordinated with the instructor, and may include working with Unity and C#, leading user studies, conducting statistical analysis of quantitative data and thematic analysis of qualitative data.

Sunandan Chakraborty, Ph.D.

Students will identify a problem and devise a solution to the problem using available datasets or curating a dataset. The data-driven solution should involve techniques from (but not limited to) machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing. The students are expected to visualize their results and validate their findings through a sound evaluation plan. The problem should ideally address a real-world issue, preferably within the domains of agriculture, health, education, and sustainability.

Ran Chang, Ph.D.

Option 1: This course assumes prior knowledge and experience with procedural and object-oriented programming in PHP, designing information systems with the MVC pattern, and developing dynamic, data-driven web applications with server-side technologies and relational databases. Prior to taking this course, students are expected to complete INFO I211 Information Infrastructure II with a C or better grade or have acquired equivalent experiences, and INFO-I425 Applications of Web Services.

Option 2: If the students are interested in the Data Mining related project topic, INFO-I223 Data Fluency and INFO-I421 Applications of Data Mining is required.  And you need to be familiar to Python or R programming language.

Lynn Dombrowski, Ph.D.

The student will lead their project (e.g., take ownership of the project; develop semester-long goals and outcomes).We will have short, weekly or bi-weekly check-in meetings to help insure they are continuing to make progress. Develop a portfolio-worthy final deliverable (e.g., a research presentation; a final paper; a prototype; etc).

James Lyst, M.S.

A capstone project is an opportunity for a student to demonstrate the ability to formulate a coherent and purposeful plan for a large project, execute the plan, seek feedback, adapt as needed, and deliver a clear presentation/demonstration of the work with thoughtful reflections. The project should make your skills, determination, and ambitions known while contributing a work that inspires others. I would require meetings every two weeks to review progress alongside asynchronous communication on Slack for sharing of artifacts and discussions as needed.

Khari Reda, Ph.D.

Students are expected to propose a data-intensive problem or question of their own choosing, and to identify a data source that can be used to address this problem. Students will then design and implement an interactive data analysis and presentation (e.g., visualization) pipeline using tools such as R, Python, Tableau, Vega, and D3. Students will report their conclusion and reflect on their solution in a project report and/or an interactive portfolio. The student will regularly coordinate with and report their progress to the instructor via bi-weekly meetings.

Louie Zhu, Ph.D.

Prerequisite: INFO-I 211

Students will identify real-world problems or issues and then develop an information system as the solution to solve the problems or address the issues. The information system must be designed with the MVC pattern. The underlying business logic must be modeled with OOP objects. The data layer can be implemented with relational databases or RESTful APIs. The application must be capable of performing CRUD operations, authenticating, and authoring users.

Getting Started

Students will submit a capstone proposal to their intended faculty capstone advisor before the dates indicated on the form. Once the capstone advisor approves the proposal, the form will route to the Recorder who will add permission to enroll within 48 hours. Students should also complete the intent to graduate form at this time.

Capstone Presentation

Is the capstone project presentation required for graduation?

Yes, it is in the very best interest of all students to finish their project, thesis, or internship at the appointed time and present their work at the capstone presentation event. Students will have a chance to have one-on-one contact with local industry representatives who may come to their presentation. All students who do not present their project, thesis, or internship at the scheduled time will receive a reduction in their final grade.

How will student progress be assessed?

Each student will turn in two progress report forms to their capstone advisor during the semester including the Project Timeline and the Progress Report. The capstone advisor will evaluate their performance and quality of work to date at these benchmark times. The second progress report will determine whether a student is prepared to participate in the capstone presentation. Progress will be determined, in part, based on how well students follow the timeline they design at the beginning of the first semester. The Project Timeline will be due the fourth week of the first semester. There will be two Progress Reports due: one at the end of the first semester, and the other at the midpoint of the second semester.

When are capstone presentations scheduled?

Capstone presentations are scheduled during the last two weeks of the fall and spring semesters. Once the date is set, students should keep this entire day free on their calendars. Students will be required to set up their posters and any other media or materials. If students will be using a computer to demonstrate their capstone, they will need to test their presentations on specifically assigned computer(s) early in the day (time TBD). Presentations will begin in the afternoon and run into the evening (time TBD).

Where will the Capstone Presentations be Held?

The capstone presentations will be held throughout the IT building in labs, the larger lecture halls, and other venues as appropriate to specific projects. Room assignments and detailed arrangements will be given to students by their capstone advisors prior to the event. Attendees will receive a printed program describing student projects and their locations.

Who will attend the capstone event?

The capstone event will be open to the public, students, friends, family, and members of industry. We invite all Informatics freshman, sophomores, and juniors to this event, as well as a range of other students, faculty, and professionals from throughout the campus and the community.

What should students wear?

Students should look professional at the capstone event. Dress should be business casual at a minimum. We encourage students to consider wearing a suit especially since potential employers may be attending the event.