Sponsoring the Capstone Project

Sponsoring the Capstone Project

Overview | Sponsoring Capstone | Individual Giving

MHCI CAPSTONE PROJECT:

A Unique Opportunity for Students & Sponsor Companies

Overview

The MHCI Capstone Project Course is a unique opportunity for our students. Many students choose Carnegie Mellon MHCI on the basis of the excellent experience the Capstone project provides.

The curriculum is structured to cover the end-to-end process of a research and development product cycle, while working closely with an industry sponsor on improvements, modifications, or new applications to their existing human-to-machine technology. The goal of this 32-week course is to give each student two opportunities: The first is to apply all of the skills they obtained from the MHCI program, and the second is a “real-life” opportunity, similar to an actual experience in a Research/Design/Development setting.

The Student Teams

Each interdisciplinary team is comprised of five to six MHCI Graduate students completing their final two semesters before graduation. The team is evenly weighted with students with backgrounds in design, technology and social sciences. The teams are matched with a sponsor based on student choice and background at the beginning of the course. In the past, certain sponsored projects have required more technical expertise than others, when this occurs, faculty do their best to pair a heavier technical team to aid in the success of the project.

The Faculty

Two to three Carnegie Mellon HCII faculty members mentor/advise the student projects each year. They meet with each team on a weekly basis, and provide ongoing lectures throughout the semesters. They are there to help set scope, manage time, and ease communication across the team and between the educational sponsor and the student team.

The Schedule

The project runs for a total of 32 weeks, from the first week of January to the first week of August. The 32 weeks are split into 2 semesters of 16 weeks each. The first semester focuses on research, and the second focuses on ideation, design, development and usability testing. During the first semester, the students are finishing up other electives for their degree, so they can only work on the project part-time. For the second semester they are required to work on the project full-time. Students cannot take summer courses, and the faculty asks part-time students to get a leave from their job so they only concentrate on the project.

The Work

The first semester curriculum focuses on getting to know the sponsor and their company, setting scope, secondary research like competitive analysis, and user research. At the end of the first semester the students are required to produce all of their findings which include a documented report, photographs, videotape, field notes, models and frameworks. The second semester includes an ideation phase, where the students take the data they found and design a prototype to meet the needs, desires and problems of the users. The remainder of the summer is spent iteratively programming and testing that design. The design should be put through at least three iterative phases. At the end of the summer, the team is required to produce a designed, developed and tested prototype.

Sponsor Relationship

We ask the Sponsoring company to collaborate closely with their student team in order to achieve the “real-life” goal for the students. This includes three “face-to-face” meetings throughout the semester, where sponsors will join their student team in Pittsburgh. The first is in January, to get to know one another and set scope for the project together. The second is in late April or early May to hear the research report presentation. Finally, the third takes place in early August to hear the usability report and to see the prototype in action. All the while, we ask that the sponsors are available for weekly meetings with their student team, guiding them to success, just as a manager may do for a team in industry.

Gifts, Contracts & IP

Carnegie Mellon University is a non-profit organization. Legally our students own the Intellectual Property they develop in the performance of the course. In order to participate in a sponsored project students are required to assign a non-exclusive, royalty free license. Any additional rights can be negotiated directly with the students at the completion of the project. If the company decides to give “a gift,” they forfeit the right to the non-exclusive license.

It is possible that student may not develop any intellectual property during the course of the project. But we can say, that the MHCI Capstone Projects have a 100% completion rate, all of our teams, in over 10 years of running this course have succeeded.

Reasons for Sponsoring

We asked a few of the companies why they keep coming back to the MHCI year after year to sponsor projects. One strong reason is a lack of resources. Several of the companies do not have strong usability teams in-house. They see this as an opportunity to have 2.5 person years of Usability expertise. Other companies use this project as a recruiting tool, offering industry positions to the top producers in their project team.

We look forward to hearing more about your projects, and working together in the future!