Capstone Project Class 11 AI Notes
What is capstone project?
A capstone project is a project where students must research a topic, deeply
understand the subject matter and integrate all their knowledge gathered about a
particular subject to develop a solution to a problem.
Capstone project helsp the students to learn many important skills including:
● How to work as a team member?
● How to clearly identify an issue? and how it is affecting (the user)?
● How to brainstorm solutions and select the best one?
● How to decide which type of AI may be useful for the proposed solution?
● How to ethically gather and use data to train a computer to help solve the issue?
● How to test the prototype with users and use their feedback to improve the
solution?
● How to pitch their solution to people who will be able to help them take action?
Some Examples for Capstone Project are given below
1. Stock Prices Predictor
2. Develop A Sentiment Analyzer
3. Movie Ticket Price Predictor
4. Students Results Predictor
5. Human Activity Recognition using Smartphone Dataset
6. Classifying humans and animals in a photo
Asking the right question before starting the AI Capstone Project
Before Starting a Project, one should analyze whether a problem has a pattern
associated with it. If there is no pattern, then the problem cannot be solved with AI
technology. It is fundamental that this question, “Is there a Pattern?” is asked before
deciding to embark on an AI development journey. Some of the questions are given
below:
● Which category? (Classification)
● How much or how many? (Regression)
● Which group? (Clustering)
● Is this unusual? (Anomaly Detection)
● Which option should be taken? (Recommendation)
What is Problem decomposition?
Problem decomposition is a method of breaking the complex problem into smaller
manageable problems.
1. Understand the problem and then restate the problem in your own words.
● Know what the desired inputs and outputs are?
● Ask questions for clarification (in class these questions might be to your
instructor, but most of the time they will be asking either yourself or your
collaborators)
2. Break the problem down into a few large pieces.
● Write these down, either on paper or as comments in a file.
3. Break complicated pieces down into smaller pieces.
● Keep breaking down until all of the pieces are small.
4. Code one small piece at a time.
● Think about how to implement it? and write the code/query.
● Test it on its own and fix problems, if any
Critical and Creative Thinking
Definition: Critical thinking is the ability to analyze a situation and make a judgment
based on facts and data. Creative thinking on the other hand refers to the ability to
come up with new ideas or rather solutions.
Introduction to Design Thinking
Definition: Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that expert teams use to
understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative
solutions to prototype and test.
Design Thinking framework
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to
solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined
or unknown. The five stages of Design Thinking are as follows: Empathize, Define,
Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
1. What is Empathize?
Empathy is the first step of the design thinking framework, which allows the user to
understand the need of the people or it helps to understand the same feelings that
others feel. In simple words, we can say that the empathizer helps to understand the
needs of the users, like the problem, circumstance, or situation of the project.
Designers are expected to interact with customers / users very frequently to gather
detailed facts about the problems and user’s expectations. A detailed analysis of these
facts leads to approaching the problem in the best possible way.
Empathy Map: An extremely useful tool for understanding the users’ needs and gaining
a deeper insight into the problem at hand is the empathy map. It also helps in
deepening that understanding, gaining insight into the user’s behavior.
An Empathy Map is divided into 4 quadrants. —Says, Thinks, Does, Feels
● Says – This quadrant contains whatever the user says aloud
● Thinks – This quadrant depicts the thoughts which user have about the problem
● Does –This quadrant depicts the actions of user
● Feels – This quadrant displays the emotional status of the user
How to create Empathy Map
Let see one example, . Anakha is having a desktop computer. She is planning to buy
one new Laptop for her educational purpose. Let us create an Empathy map for
Anakha.
2. What is define?
In the Define stage, information collected during Empathize is used to draw insights and
is instrumental in stating the problem that needs to be solved. It’s an opportunity for the
design thinker to define the challenge or to write the problem statement in a
human-centered manner with a focus on the unmet needs of the users. In order to
extract relevant facts and information from users, it is recommended to use this simple
and reliable method of questioning: the 5W1H method example, asking questions
starting with Who? What? When? Where? Why? and how?
For Example: For the traffic issue in a city, we could define the problem in detail after
getting the answers of 5W1H questions. Sample questions of the problem is given
below
3. What is Ideate?
Ideate is the third stage of the design thinking framework, which involves brainstorming,
brain dumping, and brain writing and other techniques to come up with many ideas that
will help to solve the problem. There are many brainstorming tools that can be used
during this stage. Here is an overview of the most essential ideation techniques
employed to generate numerous ideas.
Brainstorm: A brainstorm helps to generate more innovative ideas; it is a collaborative
process that allows for the generation of many ideas without judging or filtering them. A
large number of ideas are collected so that different options are available for solving the
challenge.
Brain dump: Brain dump is very similar to Brainstorm; It allows the concerned person
to write down their ideas onto paper or post-it notes and share their ideas later with the
larger group.
Brain writing: Brain writing is also very similar to brainstorming; it is a technique where
the concerned person can write their ideas in silence instead of speaking aloud. After
writing the ideas, the first person will pass their piece of paper to another participant,
then the second person will elaborate on the first person’s ideas and so forth. In this
way, all participants pass their papers on to someone else, and the process continues.
4. What is Prototype?
Prototyping is the pre-stage of the model or ideas of what a final product is expected to
look like. It is a process of building models to test ideas and gather feedback from
users. Prototyping is intended to answer questions that get you closer to your final
solution.
5. What is Test?
One of the most important parts of the design thinking process is to test the prototypes
with the end users. This step is often seen going parallel to prototyping. During testing,
the designers receive feedback about the prototype(s), and get another opportunity to
interact and empathize with the people they are finding solutions for. Testing focuses on
what can be learned about the user and the problem, as well as the potential solution.
Sustainable Development Goals
Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. A sustainable
future is about balancing economic growth with environmental protection and social
equity. To achieve a sustainable future, 17 goals have been announced by the United
Nations, which are termed the Sustainable Development Goals. The 17 goals are –
No poverty, Zero hunger, Good health and well-being, Quality education, Gender
equality, Clean water and sanitation, Affordable and clean energy, Decent work and
economic growth, Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Reduced
inequalities, Sustainable cities and communities, Responsible consumption and
production, Climate action, Life below water, Life on land, Peace justice and strong
institutions, and Partnerships for the goals.
Some other use cases of the SDGs are given below
● Good health and well being
● Gender equality
● Renewable energy
● Combating hunger and poverty
● Protecting resources
● Promoting responsible consumption and production
● Providing access to education
● Sustainable and safe cities and communities
Project Abstract Creation Using Design Thinking Framework
We can now choose a problem (capstone project) and check how it can be detailed
using Design Thinking Framework.
Format for Project Abstract Creation
1. Project Name:
2. Team Members Name:
3. Problem Selection –Important issue which you think can be solved using AI by
doing survey or interview and which is aligned to any of the SDGs.
4. Users Affected by the Problem:
5. Empathise – create Empathy Map
6. Define the Problem – Write down the 5W1H questions and write the problem
statement
7. Ideate – Brainstorm and write down the ideas
8. Prototype- Create prototype by simple drawing, poster, group
role-playing,homemade “gadget, or a 3D printed product.”
9. Test (optional at this stage)
