This document provides a few reasoned examples of project topics for the HCI course at Politecnico di Torino, to help students better structure their own proposals for Milestone 0.
Projects' ideas proposed in the 2019 and 2020 edition of the course served as an inspiration for the examples below. Some examples present already good proposals (marked with OK), with a few opportunities to improvement, while others (REFINE) start from problematic proposals and show how to re-work them.

Please, notice that this is provided mainly as a guide for reasoning on different aspects of a project proposal, according to the template provided during the course.

Idea: We would like to support waiters to find an on-call job.
Target population: Users that want propose themselves for an on-call contract in a restaurant/pub/cafe.
General activity: Speed up users' job searching, putting in contact the restaurant owner with the potential waiters, add preferences and personal experience.

👍 Why it is good 👍: The target population is quite well selected and relatively easy to reach out. The idea is quite specific and there is space for extracting various needs. The possibilities for general activities are wide enough and well linked with the idea.

🔥 What can be improved 🔥: The idea and the general activities can be better explored: the exploration can go over finding and matching jobs with people, by keeping into account the experience, evaluation (on both sides), etc.

Idea: We would like to help amateur cooks while they're cooking.
Target population: Amateur cooks.
General activity: We are planning to help amateur cooks to use and to find their recipes easily.

👍 Why it is good 👍: The target population is clear and possibly easy to reach out. Similarly, the project idea is well-defined and many needs can be potentially extracted.

🔥 What can be improved 🔥: The general activity is problematic. An option is to focus more on one aspect (i.e., finding recipes vs. the actual cooking). The actual cooking is more interesting, as "finding" is just one feature.

Idea: We would like to support the population of a neighborhood in communicating with local authorities and institutions.
Target population: People of all ages that durably live in a district (workers, students, etc.), but not visitors (e.g., turists).
General activity: Report issues related to the conditions of public facilities, e.g. roads, garbage, parks, trees, incidents. Know better the opinion of the population about a topic.

👍 What is good 👍: The target population is well defined. The project idea is promising and interesting.

🔥🔥 What needs to be improved 🔥🔥: The project idea is expressed in a too general form. The first activity is a feature, not an activity, while the second one does not apply: it would be for a different target group (e.g., city administrators).

🙌 How can be fixed 🙌:
General activity: Improvement of the ways citizens have to interact with public authorities, to express their issues related to the conditions of public facilities, e.g., roads, garbage, and to express requests for improvements to public infrastructures, e.g., to build a new street or park.

Idea: We would like to help bar and restaurant customers to read the menu and make their order in a simple, more comfortable, and safer way.
Target population: Customers of bars, restaurants and other similar services.
General activity: Instead of waiting for the menu and then wait again to make the order, the customer can automatically access to the menu offered by the bar/restaurant and order what they prefer in a faster and simpler way.

👍 What is good 👍: The target population is ok and it seems easy to reach out. The domain is interesting.

🔥🔥 What needs to be improved 🔥🔥: The idea and the general activities are already describing a specific solution. The focus must be on the task (ordering? seating? eating? ...?). Also, avoid replicating existing apps or kiosks.

🙌 How can be fixed 🙌:
Idea: We would like to help bar and restaurants customers to better manage the ordering process at the table.
General activity: Improve food locals' ordering process, managing customers' needs while they are inside the structure: sitting, ordering, and paying.