Overview

The MHCI Project course is an 8-month long capstone project for the Master’s of HCI program and integrates everything the students have learned in their coursework into one "end-to-end" experience. Students work in interdisciplinary teams with an industry sponsor to produce a working prototype that serves as a proof of concept of a novel service or product idea. The students come from a variety of backgrounds including Computer Science, Psychology, Design, and other related programs.

Process

The industrial client defines the project area and guides its direction. In the first few months of the project (January to April), students conduct user research and brainstorm product ideas. The user research phase begins with students conducting contextual inquiries and background research to understand the nature and needs of the customer/user and tasks relevant to their problem. Based on that understanding, students go through an innovation phase producing product ideas situated to meet the identified needs. With strong sponsor input, they narrow down their ideas and select one or more to pursue further. Then, over the summer, students engage in a prototyping and user-testing phase where they produce prototypes with increasing fidelity and iteratively test them with users to improve the design. They do weekly iteration cycles, so by the end of the summer, product prototypes are well refined and adapted to user needs. The end goal is a working prototype that serves as a proof of concept of the product idea.

Our project sponsors are organizations and individuals who make possible far-reaching, high-quality research at the HCII. Our work with sponsors typically engages customers and users in the research process. Our sponsors and we believe that the perspective of customers and users is an essential part of developing the theory and practice of human-computer interaction. Our sponsors are typically interested in research that speaks to both long and short term impact. Projects range from those sponsored by an individual company and performed by a small group of students to multi-department institutes sponsored by large firms or even multi-company consortia.

Previous Carnegie Mellon|Portugal MHCI Sponsors and Projects

• 2009

  • Portugal Telecom / Sapo - Sapo is the Internet division of Portugal Telecom, the leading web portal in Portugal.

     

  • Critical Software - Critical Software provides solutions, services and technologies for mission and business critical information systems across several markets. Critical’s success lies in bringing quality and innovation to our customers’ information systems in a timely and cost effective manner. We have a solid track record of on time, on budget and on quality projects and have successfully released technologies and products worldwide in specific niche markets. 

     

  • Promosoft - Promosoft Integration is the quintessential company, dedicated to the integration of solutions and the provision of IT infrastructures (system software and hardware), as well as support and/or integration of own or third party management applications and of specialized non-application solutions. It also provides services in the following areas: technological consultancy, applications and architectural design of integrated solutions and the incorporation of value added into third party products.

     

• 2008

  • Portugal Telecom - MEO -Students are applying usability methods to develop a prototype that will enhance the TV experience for Meo users across platforms. Meo is an innovative TV service provided by Portugal Telecom, that gives its users the " power" to control their interaction.

  • Outsystems (Carnegie Mellon Program)

Check the HCII/CMU Project page for details on past projects and sponsors.

Interested in Sponsoring?

Please see the brochure (PDF) describing the sponsorship process. To find out more about sponsoring a project team, read more about our project sponsors or contact mhci[at]m-iti.org. Past sponsors at HCII/CMU include:

Bell Atlantic, DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Disney, General Motors, IBM, Intel, Interactive Systems, Inc., McDonnell Foundation, Microsoft, National Science Foundation, Omron, Oracle Corporation, ONR - Office of Naval Research, NASA - National Aeronautics & Space Administration, Panasonic, Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse, National Science Foundation, Navy and DARPA, SPAWAR - Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Tides Center, University of Pittsburgh, University of Virginia, Verizon/BBNT and Xerox PARC

Contact Us: mhci@m-iti.org / +351 291 705 151