Present a final report on your research, in the twin media of design curation and linear print. Reports in both media will contribute to your grade. For the non-linear new medium, this is the final, cumulative entry of your Design Curation. For the linear medium of paper, the specification is formal. As part of this, specify what conference or journal you would send your paper to.

Research Paper Specification

A scientific research paper is a tightly constructed evidence-based argument in favor of the intellectual merit and broad impact of your work. Go back to how you stated these in your research proposal. Go back to your primary research questions and objectives. Revise as appropriate. Use this paper to make the case for them! Support with evidence. Don't overclaim.

To discover structural templates for how to write your paper, identify prior papers that you like, which remind you of your research contribution. Study them! Imitate them structurally.

A scientific research paper is, in general, a top down, highly structured affair. Introduce each section of the paper with a topic paragraph, which articulates what’s coming and how the parts are linked together.

Writing a research paper is an iterative process. Think about the research contributions at each iteration. Make changes across the entire document as necessary (including the title). Consistency of language is key!

As you write, getting support from the Writing Center is strongly encouraged.

Research paper deliverable components include:

• TITLE [5]: Super concise statement about the research contribution of what you’ve done and why it matters. Make it catchy! DO NOT JUST use the name of your system.
• ABSTRACT [7.5]: Boil down the argument for your research. Present your motivation and research questions. Succinctly tell us what you developed and how you studied it. Succinctly articulate your research contribution. Make me want to read the paper. Since it is a focused statement of the contribution as a whole, the abstract is often written last. The maximum length is ~ 300 words.
• INTRODUCTION [10]: What is the problem/need you are addressing? (You may use a scenario here.) What is your motivation to do this work? What are your research questions? What approach do you take? Why and how?
  
  The INTRODUCTION is crucial. It must sufficiently interest the reader / reviewer, or they will stop reading!

• Build on the Introduction you wrote for the proposal assignment. Incorporate the perspective gained from performing the assignment.  
• Articulate your research questions.
• Relate to the most important prior work.
• End the Introduction with a typical topic paragraph that presents the structure of the rest of the paper, which links the sections together to make the argument.

• PRIOR WORK [10]: Identify and succinctly explain the relevant prior work.

• Through discussions with your instructors, and reading, situate your paper in an appropriate research conference venue venue. Identify relevant sub-fields in prior work in the venue. Frame your research presentation to catch the attention of the venue's audience. Use the venue's template for formatting and styles. Find the past several years' proceedings of the conference online, skim to identify appropriate papers, and make sure to include them in your prior work section. Find appropriate keywords and conference classification.
• There are three kinds of prior work: needs, resources, and precedents.

• Needs are preexisting conditions that drive the process of innovation. They motivate the relevance of the innovation, answering the question, "Why is this important?" Needs include stories and statistics about people and the world, interview data, and projections about future conditions.
• Ingredients are pre-existing materials that you will used for constructing your innovation. These include enabling technologies (hardware and software), design methods, processes, and materials.
• Precedents are points of departure. They are prior methods, systems, and services that are similar to the innovation at hand. Enumeration of precedents, with comparative analysis, serves as a basis for differentiating the new invention from what has been done before.

• Clearly state how each citation contributes to what you are doing, and how your work differs (builds on it!). Include a topic paragraph for this section, which explains how the pieces fit together. If you cite and explain prior work in other sections of the paper, while describing methods or techniques, or in discussion, you don't need to repeat those here. (This section usually goes right after the Introduction. In rare cases, it makes sense to provide it later.)

• ITERATIVE DESIGN [7.5]: 

• What has motivated your design? What design did you arrive at? Include aspects of hardware, software, interaction, and experience, as appropriate.
• Describe the user experience that you support and the technology probe that you developed to manifest it. Address interface, interaction, functional components, the flow of control between components, and the flows that involve users. Scenarios and use cases are a possible strategy.
• How has your iterative design process proceeded? How has your design evolved from initial conception, through prototypes and user studies? What options have you considered? How have you selected from among design choices?
• What has been the role of data collected in formative studies? How has your concept guided the process? How has your concept evolved through the process?
• What role has new understandings of prior work played in your iterative design?
• In this section, provide data from your preliminary study, User Study 1 and other data collection, specifically data that led to revisions in the design of the user experience.
• Note: This section is NOT system documentation. DO NOT provide low level details of how your system works.

• STUDY METHODOLOGY [12.5]: How did you develop evidence to investigate your research questions? What data did you gather? Why?

• Study Method: how did you engage users?
• What were tasks and procedures?
• Who were your participants? How many?
• What data did you collect? What methods did you use to analyze it?

• STUDY FINDINGS [12.5]: Develop evidence to develop new knowledge, with regard to your research questions. Develop and present a summative evaluation of your system. Incorporate data and findings from your User Study 2 deliverable.

• For qualitative data: How did you engage in open and focused / axial coding? What codes did you derive? How does the data fit them? What are specific quotes and observations that correspond to codes? How do you build theory from the codes?
• For quantitative data: What were independent and dependent variables? What are the results? What measures of statistical significance can you use to analyze the data and motivate your interpretations? What hypotheses are proved? (Do not use Likert data.)
• DO NOT provide basic usability data in this section.

• DISCUSSION [12.5]: A synthesis, based on your findings and research questions, which delivers new knowledge to your research audience. Connect aspects of your research questions, your technology probe, your data, and prior work to motivate your research contributions. Use the evidence you developed, in conjunction with other evidence from the world, some of which may be in your prior work section (and some not) to build the new knowledge.
  This classic payoff for research is a distillation of the intellectual merit.

• Develop implications for design. Generalize what you have learned into principles that can inform others. The implications for design are ultimate products of your work, which can help other researchers and developers.

• How have you solved the problem? What can be learned from the solution(s)? What new understanding has your project developed? How?
• These principles emerge from formative and summative aspects of the design process and data. What techniques and methods are derived? How are they connected to the data? Argue for them!

• Explicate significant methods and techniques. How have you solved the problem? What can be learned from the solution(s)? What new understanding has your project developed? How? How can the implications be contextualized amidst various prior research and practice?

• CONCLUSION [7.5]: Sum up the contributions of the present research. What field(s) does the research impact? How have you combined disciplinary perspectives and methodologies in an innovative way? How does the project advance knowledge and understanding within its own field or across different fields? What new knowledge have you created? What new understanding have you developed? How does the project suggest and explore creative and original concepts? Recapitulate your contributions. Develop their significance. Motivate how the work is transformative, how it has the potential to impact various fields, and the world.
• FUTURE WORK [5]: what to do in the future. May be longer here than would be allowed in most papers. Include how you would proceed in building a full implementation (unless you happen to have done that already). Note: this section is only here because of the constraints of a class project. You probably would not include it in a paper for publications.
• REFERENCES [5]: Make sure to cite all relevant publications here.

• Use the proper formatting, as per the conference proceedings template.
• Order your references by author's last name. Be consistent and thorough!

These next 2 deliverables are part of this assignment, for class, but would not be part of a real research paper, and so are specified as appendices.

• FIGURES and CAPTIONS [7.5]. Illustrate the system and data. Explain contextually and clearly in captions. MAKE SURE to reference every figure in the text.

• DESIGN CURATION as a WHOLE [10]. Use the visual and spatial medium to convey relationships among elements of your research.

figures and captions

Illustrate your paper clearly, with figures such as screenshots, diagrams, flowcharts, users in action. If you include graphs of data, make sure that the axes are labeled clearly!

Write clear captions for each figure. Each caption must be self-explanatory, summarizing important aspect(s) of your research.

Each figure must be referenced clearly in the text (with its Figure number), in context. Make sure that figures appear on the same page where they are referenced or, at the very least, on an earlier page (do not put figures on pages after they are referenced).

length

The expected length  of a research paper is 8-10 pages. For class, yours may be shorter, depending on the stage of your research. It should be prepared in the format of an appropriate conference (e.g., ACM CHI Proceedings format) or journal.  Put page numbers on each page after the first.

Turn in using project form.

co-evaluation: final project as a whole

Each member of each group must independently turn in the self + peer evaluation rubric, which concisely states the name of the project, what your role in the project was, and what the role of each other member of the team was. Fill in entries for yourself and all members of your team.

hci contribution type

For HCI papers, carefully read the ACM CHI Conference Guide to a Successful Archive Submission. Meditate on this sagely advice about how to construct your research paper. Also, as relevant, use the HCI Contributions Guide to ascertain which contribution type you are developing: Development or Refinement of Interface Artifacts or Techniques”, “Systems, Tools, Architectures and Infrastructure”, or “Understanding Users”. Make sure to tell the instructors which type you are pursuing!

more guides to writing

Beyond my specification, here are some other guides to writing research papers: Saul Greenberg  Glasgow-MSR   Harvard: Writing Strategies   Harvard: Writing in the Sciences   Hutchings et al     MobileHCI   Keshav.

Again, the best guides are research papers that you’ve read and admire, especially highly cited papers in your target venue. They  can serve as exemplars for paper structure, as well as for concept, method, and technique references. Use them as templates.