MHCI Capstone Project

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A Unique Opportunity for Students & Sponsor Companies

MHCI Program & Project Video

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 Course 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 new ideas or applications that may work with 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 5 to 6 MHCI graduate students completing their final two semesters before graduation. Carnegie Mellon attempts to structure the teams so that they are evenly weighted with students with backgrounds in design, technology and social sciences. The teams are matched with a Course sponsor based on student choice and background at the beginning of the Course. In the past, certain Course projects have required more technical expertise than others, and when this occurs, faculty do their best to assign a team of students having appropriate technical backgrounds 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 are expected to work on the project only part-time. For the second semester they are expected to work on the project full-time.

The Work
The first semester Course curriculum focuses on getting to know the sponsor and its company, setting scope, secondary research like competitive analysis, and user research. At the end of the first semester the students are expected to produce a report of their findings. The second semester includes an ideation phase, where the students take the data they found and work to design a prototype that they believe will meet the needs, desires and problems of the users. The students are expected to spend the remainder of the summer iteratively programming and testing their chosen design. At the end of the summer, the team is expected to produce a designed, developed and tested prototype.

Sponsor Relationship
We ask the sponsoring company to collaborate closely with its student team in order to achieve the “real-life” goal for the students. This includes three “face-to-face” meetings throughout the Course, 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 report presentation. Finally, the third takes place in early August to hear the student team’s final presentation and see the prototype they have developed 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. Of course, while we expect sponsors to offer feedback regarding the student team’s ideas and to answer questions, we do not expect or desire the sponsor to assist the student team in any actual design or development of their Course project work.

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 that their companies benefit from the good ideas produced by the students during the Course, which is a particular help to those companies that do not have strong usability teams in-house. Other companies use this project as a recruiting tool, offering industry positions to the top producers in their Course project team.

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

For a list of past projects click here

For more information please contact:
Jenna Date
Director of MHCI
jdate [at] cs [dot] cmu [dot] edu