For each module a list of project activities is planned. These activities can be completed with the information provided in the lectures and the papers on Blackboard. Some project activities include so-called milestones. These milestones give groups the opportunity to present their progress thus far.

Students will design an ‘Intelligent Virtual Agent’ (IVA) by following and applying methods and theories about scenario-based development given in the weekly lectures and the provided literature. Not only the development of the actual application is important, but also the experience users have by interacting with this agent. The aim of this project assignment is to give students the chance to understand and get a feel of both the development and the evaluation of such an application.

The development phase consists of several steps, divided among the different modules of the 3rd quarter. One such step is the creation of a poster presentation of the envisioned application. By doing this the whole group needs to think out a whole scenario, together with use cases, core functions and a claims analysis. Afterwards, every group has to pick out one aspect of this scenario and implement a prototype. Before the end of this quarter, every group needs to present this prototype, together with a test plan.

A pilot test can be conducted in the 2nd week of 4th quarter (around module 9). Groups may encounter unforeseen errors or behaviour while evaluating their prototype in this stage and it’s therefore necessary to improve the prototype before the ‘real’ evaluation can begin.

Every student group will come in contact with the following:

•    Task analysis, as well as domain and support analysis and theory about human factors
•    Creating a scenario, applying the claims analysis and making use cases
•    Selecting and creating a prototype of a specific aspect of the scenario
•    Defining a test plan for the actual experiment and evaluation
•    Interpreting and analyzing the results

To make sure every group is up to par with the project assignment, several milestones are introduced. These milestones can be seen as steps in both the development as the evaluation phases.