Assignment 2 — Innovation Seminar

General Overview

In order to build good and original innovations, it is important to evaluate what other people have already done — and think critically about what is good and bad, as well as explore ways to improve and generate new ideas. In addition, it is important to learn how to articulate one's ideas clearly and succinctly, both orally and in writing. The innovation seminar is designed to help students:

1. Learn how to identify and assess innovative ideas.
2. Gain a better understanding of existing innovations.
3. Learn how to present (or sell one's ideas).
4. Learn how to articulate their ideas in writing.

For this assignment, you will form teams of up to four people. Each team will be randomly assigned a project from the submissions in Assignment 1 to analyze and present. Your main task will be to dissect the innovation behind your assigned A1 project and pitch it as if you are presenting to a VC firm (the rest of the class) on Tuesday, 10 September 2024 at 2:30 am.

Assigned Innovation

As part of this assignment, you will need to delve deeply into the problem space that your assigned innovation aims to address. We encourage you to connect with the creators of your assigned A1 project to gain diverse perspectives and insights.

You may find that an A1 project encompasses multiple innovations. It is up to your team to integrate these elements into a coherent and unified presentation within the given time constraints. Alternatively, you may choose to focus on a single specific aspect of the innovation, but do ensure that this focus is substantial and compelling enough for your presentation.

Target Audience & Level of Technicality

You can assume the target audience to be your fellow classmates, and the whole goal of this assignment is for you to convince your classmates that your assigned idea is the coolest! A suitable level of technicality is allowed in the presentation. That is, you are allowed to use technical terms that you think your classmates will be able to understand, but please don't start going through the steps of Dijkstra's algorithm line-by-line during your presentation.

Grading and Admin

The presentations should attempt to cover the following points about the chosen innovation:

1. Description of the innovation.
2. Why we should care about the innovation you chose (i.e. the potential impact).
3. What is good about the innovation.
4. What are the limitations of the innovation, and suggestions on how they can be overcome.
5. What are some the aspects of innovation you will design / implement differently, and why.

For engaging and excitingly quick pace presentation, we are using a format called Pecha Kucha (see this video (opens in a new tab) for an example).

In brief, each presentation is limited to 20 slides, and each slide should have exactly 20 seconds of air time. This means that each presentation should be approximately 7 minutes (6 minutes 40 seconds to be precise) long. Please stay within this time limit. You can choose to have a single person present or have more than one, but keep in mind that you have a limited time. The teaching staff WILL cut you off after the time limit.

Perhaps it is impossible to cover all the suggested points above in 7 minutes? Well, the point here is to make a thoughtful presentation. You need to work out as a group exactly what to do if you can't fit everything into 7 minutes. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes it's not. Life is full of hard questions.

You can present using PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, or whatever tools you wish to use. Surprise us (in a good way) if you can. BEFORE submitting, please ensure that your slides auto-advance every 20 seconds. No cheating! 😜

Following the presentation, there will be a short Q&A session opened to the rest of the class for a maximum of 5 minutes.

Innovation Critique

After listening to all the presentations, each student will be randomly assigned to write about two of the innovations that were presented (not your own presentation or any presentation covering your A1 submission) and have to write about the following:

1. Based on what the presenting team has shared, describe and explain what the innovation or technology is about. Please do not regurgitate the entire presentation. Summarise the points and keep them unopinionated. (5%)
2. Was the presentation effective? Did the group show that they fully internalised the presentation techniques discussed in Lecture 3 (PUNCH->WIIFY->Plan)? (6%)
3. What are your (original) thoughts? (9%)

The fun part is that the assignment of the presentations each student has to write about will be done only AFTER all the presentations are over. This means that every student will have to pay attention to every presentation 😎. Those who like Russian Roulette are welcome to skip and zone out for some presentations.

This is not a literature class, and you are not required to write in poetry. We only ask that you think carefully about what you heard and express your ideas clearly. Points will not be taken off for typos or grammatical errors as long as the ideas are expressed clearly and can be understood easily. There is no minimum length, but do have some mercy on your poor lecturer and try to keep each innovation critique within 300 words. What matters is not how much you write but the quality of your thoughts and ideas and how much you actually learnt from the process.

You are, of course, also welcome to write about other aspects of the seminar and also about lessons learnt in addition to this assignment. The innovation critiques should be submitted on Coursemology by Wednesday, 11 September 2024 at 7:59 pm (i.e. the next day).

Response and Follow-up of Critique

Once all the innovation critiques are submitted, a new forum will appear, and you will post your critiques there. You will read the critiques written by your coursemates on your presentation and have an online discussion. If your coursemates think that your team's given innovation is not innovative, you should try to convince them otherwise.

Just bear in mind that the goal of CS3216 is to learn. You do not do better in this segment of the assignment by being nasty and running your coursemates down. Be civil. Remember to be polite and kind. If others post comments disagreeing with you, do not be too defensive. All these comments should be posted by Saturday, 14 September 2024 at 7:59 am.

How many comments should you post? As many as you think is appropriate and sufficient to earn the 10% grade for this part of the assignment.

Remember: everything will go well (including your grade) if you demonstrate that you actually learnt something and have approached this innovation seminar in a thoughtful way 😃.

You will also get points if your friends post stuff on your forum posts. The idea here is that whether you can write stuff that is thoughtful enough to attract readers and people to post comments is also a measure of "quality".

Assessment Scheme

The following are the weightages for the two components:

• 50% Group presentation
• 30% Innovation critique (what you write in your posts)
• 20% Response and follow-up of critiques (addressing critiques on your chosen innovation and responses to your posts)

Overall, the innovation seminar is worth 10% of your final grade.

Mode of Submission

The slides for the presentation should be named group-<number>-seminar.{pptx|key} and uploaded to Coursemology by Monday, 9 September 2024 at 7:59 pm, because we will be downloading the slides to project on-screen or screen-share during class.

The innovation critiques should be submitted within 24 hours of the innovation seminar, by Wednesday, 11 September 2024 at 7:59 pm. Your comments for the mutual critique part should be made by Saturday, 14 September 2024 at 7:59 am.

Clarifications and questions related to this assignment should be posted to the Coursemology forum.

The way this assignment is structured, it might seem very stressful — but it's really not quite as bad as it seems. It's actually fun if taken in the right spirit.

Good luck and have fun! 🙂