Thesis proposal

Purpose & Audience

Your thesis proposal should give the reader a deep understanding of the project you are proposing, demonstrate that you've carefully planned it, and that it is feasible for you to complete by the end of Thesis II. You will describe your prototype as evidence of the latter.

Write for a computer science literate audience. You do not need to define basic terminology, but all acronyms and services/applications need to be spelled out and defined.

Required content

Your proposal should have the following structure:

• Cover page
• Table of contents with page numbers
• Abstract
  • briefly describe your project (one or two short paragraphs)
• Introduction and background (related work goes here)
  • provide motivation for your project, what it does at a high level, and what the related work is
• Requirements
  • describe what attributes a completed, successful version of your project must have
  • you can describe these as user stories
• Architecture
  • explain the components of our project and how they interact with each other
  • describe two major design decisions, including a description of alternatives, their trade offs, and why you made the decision you made
  • include two or more diagrams to support your description
  • include tables as necessary (each to describe a programming interface)
• User interfaces
  • describe the views/interfaces/screens will your project have and how they related to each other and the components described in the architecture
  • describe one or two major design decisions (as outlined above)
  • include a wireframe of every major screen/interface/view
• Data model
  • describe what data will be stored, where it will be stored, and how it will be stored
  • describe why you chose to store it the way you stored it, including what appropriate alternatives there are
  • include a database diagram to aide your description
• Prototype
  • describe the prototype, referencing the previous sections as necessary to make it clear what requirements the prototype satisfies and which ones it does not
• Timeline
  • layout when major requirements/components/features/etc. will be completed between the end of Thesis I and the end of Thesis II. Keep in mind that everything needs to be pretty much wrapped up by late April
• Summary
  • summarize your proposal
• References
  • include any works you cited

The bolded sections (requirements, architecture, user interfaces, and data model) can be moved around and merged as appropriate.

Formatting and style

• Include page numbers on all pages but the title page
• Use Chicago citations for articles and the like; use footnotes for application homepages
• All figures and tables should include a label and a short, descriptive caption (e.g, "Figure 1. The splash screen.")
  • every figure and table should be referenced somewhere in the text: "As Table 1 shows, ....")
• Do not use contractions (e.g., "don't" should be "do not")