Assignment 3: Proposal Revision & Presentation

The next assignment involves revising and polishing your proposal. It will be due Tues 12 Sep. On this date you should also have a short, 7 minute presentation describing the project. This will be done in front of the class, and each presentation will be critiqued. There are some common issues with all of the proposals, be sure to address these in your revision:

• Always have someone else read your proposal! Ask someone to give you feedback and explain your project to you. This will help you identify holes or unclear explanations.
  
• Avoid informal language, like "you" and "I". These can be directly substituted with "one" and "we". Imagine that the document speaks for you and your "company", rather than it being written by you.
  
• Background, background, background. Be sure to do your due diligence in finding competing work. It will be rare that you have truly novel idea, who else thought of it?
  
• Make strong points. Avoid weak or self deprecating comments. This document should convince me that you are the right person/team for the job.
  
• Avoid too much internal detail in system description. Your description should be detailed, but only with respect to system boundaries. Delving into specifics about its implementation will confuse the reader, and in many cases make the system seem fuzzier rather than more concrete. Focus on aspects of the description from an "outside" point of view.
  

Also, make sure that you have reasonable section headings, your cover sheet is only one page and contains your contact info, if you have an itemized budget be sure that it has a total at the bottom. You should go back through the assignment 1 description, and make sure you have addressed each of the topics. Your grade on this project will depend on the amount of improvement when compared to the draft you just submitted.