Students enrolled in CPSC 584 are required to complete a small-scale (4-5 pages, excluding references) literature review on an emergent HCI topic of their choice. The review should be a descriptive summary of research on the chosen topic. It should serve to inform readers of the important ideas and knowledge that has been established on that topic.

The purpose of this assignment is for graduate students to improve their skills to:

  • identify and formulate an inquiry question that defines what they would like to learn about;
  • read research reports;
  • analyze information found in academic articles; and
  • synthesize new knowledge into a written review.

Literature reviews should be done in groups of 2 students (one group may have 3 students if there is an odd number of students that are enrolled in CPSC-584).

Late Policy: Any literature review assignment that is submitted after the official deadline, will receive a penalty of 50% of the assignment grade. Assignments will not be accepted more than 24h after the deadline.

NOTE: Using ChatGPT or automatic text generation algorithms for writing any assignment related to the literature review is not allowed. The goal of the literature review is to give students an opportunity to learn about an emergent HCI area. The literature review requires searching for papers, reading them, and synthesizing the work in written form – which are all great activities to learn about new ideas and topics in HCI!

☞ There are many online resources that explain how to conduct literature reviews. In particular, we recommend reading "The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It" by University of Toronto, which includes many interesting questions that can help your frame your review. Also, this guide by Central Michigan University provides a good explanation of how you should be thinking about choosing an inquiry (research) question for your literature review.

Assignment Components

The assignment will have two main components:

  • Milestone (3%): Students submit a pdf (use this template) to Gradescope with an inquiry question that defines what they would like to learn about in their literature review. The deliverable should describe the importance of the chosen topic for the literature review (Why is it interesting? Why is it worth studying?). In addition, the deliverable should clearly convey the scope of the review (What related topics will not be analyzed or discussed in the review?). Students should avoid doing their literature review on a topic for which another recent review already exists.

    ☞ Tip from this guide by Central Michigan University: "A good research (inquiry) question is manageable in scope - not too broad, but not too narrow. If your topic is too broad, you may become overwhelmed with the amount of information and find it difficult to organize your ideas. If your topic is too narrow, you may not be able to find enough information to include in your literature review."

  • Literature Review (7%): Students submit a 4-5 pages pdf (excluding references) with their literature review. The submission should have a title that describes the content of the review, and should be structured as follows:

    • Introduction: Establishes the topic and context of the review.
    • Methodology: Describes how the papers have been searched for and organized for the review.
    • Review: Main body that summarizes prior work and analyzes gaps in the literature that are worth of future study.
    • Conclusion: Summary of key ideas and information that was found to be particularly important through the review.
    • References: List of references that were mentioned in the paper. References should adhere to the in-text citation style and reference format guidelines that are used for ACM publications.

    It is expected that literature reviews will include no less than 6 relevant citations per team member.

    The literature review should be created in according to the ACM Sig Conference Proceeding (double column format). Students can use Overleaf’s online template to generate their pdf with LaTeX if desired.

    ☞   The literature review may include an optional "Statement of contributions" section. This statement should not be considered for the maximum length of 5 pages. The statement can be used to acknowledge significant contributions by team members and/or report missing contributions. The course staff may grade the review individually when team member contributions are significantly uneven.

    Avoid plagiarism - give credit where credit is due. You must document all of the source material used in your literature review. If you take text from somebody else or an existing paper, you must make it clear that the text is being quoted and where the text comes from. In LaTeX, you can add quote sections easily to your report using the csquotes package (see this tutorial). If you paraphrase someone’s work, you still need to cite the source (e.g., using the \cite{} command as explained here). You must also cite the sources for figures, charts, or other material that is not your own. If you have any questions about what does or does not constitute plagiarism, please consult with the course staff. We take plagiarism seriously.