Computer Science Capstone Design

Assignment: Capstone Poster

Overview

A poster presentation allows you to distill your work into a small form-factor, thus making you focus on the essence of the problem you're solving and the key aspects of your solution. As part of the UGRADS poster presentation session, you will have the chance to offer an overview and discuss your work with large number of scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines.

While different projects have different needs, you should consider including some or all of the following sections in your poster, as appropriate for your project and in consultation with your mentor. The following is not a set of requirements, but intended to give you a general sense of some information elements you should consider including:

• Motivation: Brief overview of your client and the problem domain as well as the unique needs or challenges that your project intends to overcome. Just like in the design reviews, this content is intended to convey why your work is important and what it contributes.


• Solution Overview: An overview of your system, from the perspective of its use and how it functions within the organizational and user problem space of your project. In other words, this should show how users and other systems interact with your system. Also present an argument for how this system addresses the challenges you've identified earlier. This should probably be the centerpiece of your poster, and you should plan on using a good deal of graphics and diagrams.


• Architecture: Present an overview of your software architecture, showing the main functional software elements involved in your system and how they communicate and share data.


• Key Features: Discuss the key features of your software system. These are the highlights that make your effort unique and valuable to the client and the primary contribution to the problem space.


• Outcomes: Discuss the results or impacts from your project. This could be a demonstration of how your software has improved the state-of-the-art or improved your client's business. In essence, this section should demonstrate that you've met the motivating goals of your work and will vary with your project.


• Technologies: Many capstone projects end up leveraging a good number of libraries or frameworks that are critical pieces in understanding the overall system. Provide a brief overview of the technology stack you're using and how it supports your work.
• Challenges: Outline the main technical challenges that you overcame in your project, along with the general strategies that you used in overcoming them.


• Testing: Provide an overview of your overall testing strategy, including the main features that your testing activities target and the qualities of your system that these tests establish.


• Future Work: Outline important features that your project forms the foundation for and that your client intends to pursue. This should not be a list of features you didn't get around to finishing! Rather, these are extensions and future "version 2" features that the client should be considering.

Preparation: How to make an effective poster

Anyone can develop some old poster; developing a truly effective poster is a valuable skill that will serve you well during your career.  To make a poster that works, you have to simultaneously satisfy several overall aims:

• Grab attention! Make people want to know more!   If you fail here, your poster is going to go under in the sea of posters being shown in a poster session.


• Serve as a basis for discussion and explanation:  For Capstone and many other poster sessions in your future, you or a teammate will be standing next to the poster, ready to engage interested parties in discussion.  Your poster should have graphics, screenshots, and other information on it that you can point to as you explain various details to curious persons drawn in by your poster and motivated to know more.


• Serve as a standalone project intro:  Your poster may also be displayed (e.g. in a building hallway) long after you are gone.  This means that your poster must have enough information to give a casual reader a good overview of what your project is about…without someone around to explain.  Your aim is not to clutter your poster with all details; you want enough to outline the project just enough to know what it’s about, what’s so cool about it, and what the outcomes were.  Don’t forget your contact info!

Realizing all three of these goals in a single, elegant poster is not easy!   The most common mistake with posters is trying to put in every last detail of the project, packing them way way full of tons of dense text to read.  You will see a lot of these at Capstone…but hopefully not from CS projects!  People browsing posters are not into reading pages of detail…they are browsing!  Instead, focus on getting them interested at a considerable distance…and then drawing them in for a closer look…and then giving enough detail to encourage them to ask you a question.

Here are a few tips for making your poster a good one:

• The 10-foot rule.  Design your poster so that the key attention-grabbing elements are easily visible at 10+ feet of distance.  This usually means the title, some cool images or diagrams or screenshots…and maybe a catchy subtitle of some sort, e.g., “Ever wish your cell phone could control traffic lights?  Our SwitchIt app might be for you…”.   If everything on your poster is a tiny blur of text at 10+ feet, people will just walk right by.


• Telling the good story.   Just as every single deliverable you’ve done for Capstone, your poster should tell a coherent story:  it should have a segment where it motivates the problem area and describes what is broken…followed by a quick outline of your solution…followed by key screen shots or diagrams, as well as some cool bulleted highlights of your solution….followed by some outline of tech/frameworks/implementation for the geeky…followed by results/conclusion emphasizing what cool value/capabilities your solution brought to the client…followed by some ideas on future work/development.  Frequently, each of these is captured in a neat little rectangular area that contains some introductory text on the topic, followed by some bullets or a table/diagram with a few details.  These “story elements” are then arranged on the poster (see next point).


• The Reading Rule.  In western countries (which is where your audience is!), we are accustomed to reading things from top left to bottom right.   Arrange your poster that way!  Have a nice header at the top with your title and logos.  The body of the poster then follows the reading rule:  the intro area goes in top left, then you “read” down to next one, up and across to next one, etc., and end with future work in bottom right.  Nice!


• Have a useful attention-getter.  Somewhere near the middle of your poster, you’ll want to put the diagram/screenshot/graphic that is your key attention-getter.  Don’t just make this flashy, make sure it’s something useful:  think about what people are probably going to ask about (e.g. how exactly does this work, etc) and then think about a screenshot or diagram that will really help you explain that.

Start your poster early!  Develop a draft and run it by your mentor for some pointers. Check out posters in the hallways of Engineering and around SICCS as examples.

Can we have a template?

Use your resources!  Don’t invent your poster from scratch! There are plenty of templates available, plus other great resources for learning how to make good posters:

• The poster preparation guidelines linked from the main UGRADS page give the basic formatting guidelines from all UGRADS posters.  They also have some pre-built templates for posters to use as starting points.  You are not at all required to use these, but it might be useful to at least start with these and then modify as you see fit.  Most posters are created as single, extra-large Powerpoint slides.   There are also instructions for getting your poster printed (for free!)…but you have to be on time; the deadline is well before Capstone!
  
  Warning: Don't blindly use the templates on the UGRADS page! The poster templates mentioned above are a great starting point for establishing basic layout, NAU logos, color scheme, etc. However, the templates were clearly created for science projects because they are structured around reporting results of an experiment/study; the section headings are not useful for EGR Capstone projects! For a Capstone project, you need to be "telling the story" about your product, not presenting some experiment you did! In short, use the UGRADS templates as base starting point , but change the headings/layout to be fit your unique needs.


• If you want something closer to home, here is a SICCS-customized template that I whipped up. Feel free to modify to choose your own colors, fonts, or layouts, so long as the NAU/SICCS logo is on it somewhere.


• Here are links to a couple of sample posters from previous Capstone teams. Sample 1; Sample 2; Sample 3. Not necessarily perfect posters in all ways, but pretty good. See how they "tell the story" starting with the intro/motivation on the left, passing through some nice screen shots/features in the middle, and then tailing out with technologies, future work, etc. on the right?


• Another good idea to warm up your brain is to look at the archive of past Capstone Teams pages. Go into various team websites to get some ideas (both positive or negative!) of past posters.
• Check out the following guide on poster design: Poster Design: A practical guide for scientists and engineers. It'll help, and it's fairly short (but dense).


• You can certainly use Powerpoint as an effective tool for preparing your poster, and the NAU-provided templates will give you a good start. Make sure the colors are coordinated, elements aligned, and the poster is readable and aesthetically pleasing. You are also welcome to use a more robust tool that you have access to, like InDesign.


• If you really want to do a good job, you should spend some time perusing Better Posters: the information there is quite helpful. Don't let your poster win at Bad Poster Bingo!

Getting your poster printed

Follow the instructions on the course schedule.

Deliverables

• A draft of your poster, discussed with your team mentor in a meeting well before Capstone. Remember: you'll need time to get your Capstone poster printed!


• Email a pdf of your final poster to your team’s faculty mentor.  Hopefully your mentor will have time to grade it live at the poster session, but this provides a backup copy for him/her to consult.


• A professionally printed poster, conforming to the template provided by the UGRADS organizers.


• Your printed poster is yours to keep.  If you do not wish to keep your poster, deliver it to your mentor after UGRADS; if it’s a good one, CS faculty may vote to display it in a public space.