Bonus Points #

There are a number of ways to earn bonus points for your project. Some of them are competitive, i.e., awarded to the teams presenting the best artifacts at different stages of the project. Others are non-competitive, i.e., awarded as long as you take extra effort to finalize and release your project. This page documents their requirements.

All value are percentages of the total project grade.

Outstanding project proposal (2%) #

This is awarded to top-20% of the teams based on the quality of their project proposal. They are nominated by the TAs from their pool of assigned teams, and verified by the course staff.

Outstanding prototype presentation (2%) #

This is awarded to top-20% of the teams based on the quality of their prototype presentation. They are nominated by the TAs from their pool of assigned teams, and verified by the course staff.

Outstanding final presentation (2%) #

This is awarded to top-20% of the teams based on the quality of their final presentation. They are nominated by the TAs from their pool of assigned teams, and verified by the course staff.

Uploading demonstration video (4%) #

Deadline: Apr 21, 11:59pm Eastern Time.

This is awarded if you prepare a short demonstration video for you app. The video should be generally 1–3 minutes long, and focus on the features of your app (instead of the content we ask for in the project report). See videos from previous years for examples.

Your video should be uploaded to a public platform, preferably YouTube. Submit the link to the video on Learn to earn this bonus item.

Publishing to app store (4%) #

Deadline: Apr 21, 11:59pm Eastern Time.

This is awarded if you publish your app to the app store. See instructions and suggestions on publishing to Google Play. To earn this bonus item, you should advance the release process to at least the internal testing stage, and submit the internal testing link on Learn.

Best app awards by the audience (6%) #

Self-Nomination Deadline: Apr 06, 11:59pm Eastern Time.

Voting Period: Apr 07–Apr 19, 11:59pm Eastern Time.

This is awarded to top-10% apps produced in the course project, selected by the audience.

To be eligible for this bonus item, you should submit a markdown document (can include images and links to videos / app demos) to showcase your app; this document will be displayed on the course website. You must submit the document by the self-nomination deadline (but can update it during the voting period).

During the voting period, all students can vote for their favorite apps (but given that there are teams with different number of members, for fairness, you cannot vote for your own team’s app).

At the end of the voting period, the top-10% (this term: 3) apps receiving the most votes will be awarded this bonus item.

Best app awards by the course staff (6%) #

This is awarded to top-10% apps produced in the course project, selected by the course staff.

All projects become automatically eligible for this bonus item, however, submitting the self-nomination document for the “best app awards by the audience” will increase your app’s visibility and chances of winning.

The course staff will review the apps and select the top-10% (this term: 3) apps to award this bonus item. The selection process is independent from the “best app awards by the audience” voting process, but the results will be announced at the same time to avoid bias.