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Prerequisites
To be allowed to start with the thesis project:
- you must have obtained at least 67.5 EC.
- you must have successfully completed the four mandatory courses.
- the contents of the project should be related to an HCI topic.
Assessment
Your thesis is usually assessed by using the following criteria:
- Level: Theoretical level, practical/experimental level, understanding of the underlying matter, and amount of work;
- Problem handling: Methods, techniques, design instrumentation, implementation, and experiments;
- Skills: Analytical skills, distinguishing matters of major and minor importance, evaluation, and independence, collaboration, self-reflectiveness, and planning;
- Effort and attitude;
- Originality;
- Relevance and knowledge utilization;
- Report/Thesis: Literature survey, problem statement, style of writing, quality of Dutch/English, report structure, textual structure, coherence/consistency, conclusions/recommendations, and neatness;
- Oral presentation: Presentation/public speaking skills, structure, discussion skills, and presentational aids; and
- if applicable: Appendices: Collected data and code including a technical description and installation manual.
To receive a cum laude, your grade for the second part should be at least 8.5. Please be aware that if you do not finish in time; normally, you cannot get a grade higher than an 8.
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Preparation
You can prepare yourself for your graduation project. Please do so and please start with this ½ year before you will start.
The recipe is as follows:
- Determine what you want with your graduation project:
- A topic
- The skills and competencies you want to develop (e.g., experimentation with people or/and programming)
- The location: company, university, or somewhere else?
- Do you have all the skills and competencies you need. If not, how will you gain them?
- Who will be your primary supervisor, daily supervisor (optional), and second supervisor/reader?
If you can answer the first step, you can start searching for graduation projects. For example, check LinkedIn, Sticky, A-Eskwadraat, KonJoin, websites from staff members, Blackboard, and mailings. Subsequently, check the second step, and answer the last step.
Alternatively, you can contact a lecturer you know who teaches and/or conducts research in your area of interest and ask him/her whether or not he/she has a graduation project for you.
In case you are stuck (for whatever reason), please feel free to contact the HCI coordinator via coordinator.hci@uu.nl.
Example MSc-thesis
Please check Osiris Zaak. Here, you can find all department's MSc-thesis. Note that these are the final MSc-thesis, submitted when finishing Part II. The intermediate report submitted to finish Part I is not stored.
Ask your supervisor for guidance on both the Part I report and the final thesis (Part II).
Registration
You are required to apply for approval of your research project by submitting a request via OSIRIS Student. Please select ‘My Cases’ > ‘Start Case’ > ‘Research Project GSNS’.
Important:
In order to apply completely and correctly, you must have discussed the project setup with your intended project supervisor beforehand ! To make sure you obtain all the information required, we advise you to study the request form before discussing it with your supervisor.
In OSIRIS Student, please also read about the delay protocol. Among other things, it says: 'There will be strict adherence to the ending date as specified (before starting the project) in the 'application form'. If an assessment is reasonably possible on the ending date, the assessment will be made and processed.'
You are advised to work full time, which means 40 hours per week. However, 32 hours per week is also allowed. In that case, please note that your project takes 25% more time to finish. Please be aware that this does not allow working on the side for more than 1 day per week.
HCI staff will occasionally send calls for internships/projects by e-mail, via study associations, via blackboard, or put them on the KonJoin system. Further, you are encouraged to visit the homepage of department staff to see what topics they are working in and whether or not this matches your own interest.
External project
You have the possibility to do your thesis project at a company, or (non-)governmental institute. Also, in such cases, two UU staff members should approve the project and serve as thesis supervisor and markers.
In case of a graduation project outside of UU, please make sure that you
- fill in the company supervisor as 'daily supervisor' section in the research project application form.
- complete the UU GSNS Work Place Agreement, signed by the student, company supervisor, and the UU Science Internship Project Coordinator.
- discuss possible deviations to the standard contract with the UU Science Internship Project Coordinator.
Scope constraints
The topic of the master thesis should lie within the HCI domain. We encourage you to choose a topic that fits your primary supervisor’s interests and ongoing work closely.
In principle, the supervisor can be any GSNS staff member, in particular of the Department of Information and Computing Sciences. Groups of interest including but not limited to:
Further, we recommend to check the KonJoin system for project proposal and research interests of individual staff members. Also, you might want to take a look at master theses from the past.
Body of the work
The MSc thesis is split into two parts: 15 EC preparation and 25 EC execution. This comprises 3 periods (or blocks) of work (including the HCI colloquium), which is about 7.5 months of work.
The first part comprises 1 period (or block) of full-time work. The student will complete (at least) the following deliverables:
- The MSc research application form (a.s.a.p.);
- A completed literature research for the project;
- A clear (list of) research question(s);
- A skeleton of the thesis;
- A time plan for the second part of the thesis;
- A description of the research methodology; and
- A plan for the evaluation of the results/outcome.
After the first part, the supervisors will make a go/no-go decision (so you will not get a grade). This decision will be entered in OSIRIS.
The second part comprises 2 periods (or blocks). You will complete (at least) the following items:
- Perform and complete scientific research according to the predefined plan;
- Write a scientific report about this research. You may choose between a regular thesis (plus optional appendix), or a scientific conference/journal paper, plus mandatory appendix; and
- Give a presentation about the work.
Procedures around the completion of your project
- Determine date and time to defend your thesis. The defense will be concluded by a discussion with the committee to determine the grade. For reservation of a room, please contact the secretariat of the Department.
- After your grade has been determined, your supervisor will fill in the assessment form in OSIRIS and submit it.
- You also need to deliver a PDF of the final version of your thesis. Do not forget this, because this is a requirement before you can graduate! Your title page should contain the name of our institution, and a thesis number (= HCI-your_student_number). Upload the PDF to Osiris Zaak.
- When your final grade is registered in OSIRIS, you will receive an email confirming that your dossier will be sent to the Board of Examinations. The date on your diploma (degree = certificate), will be the last working day of the month in which your final grade is registered.
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