Reality Check with Kineto §

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Source: https://iis-lab.org/misc/realitycheck/

• On this page, we have listed questions to check how solid the ideas you are considering as a Research project are. When the direction of your Idea is somewhat determined, try this Reality Check and consult with Yatani. Prepare your answers and start from the top question. This Reality Check is designed to be completed by going through all the questions, so please make sure to finish it to the end. If you get stuck or have any questions about how to fill it out, feel free to ask for advice from your seniors.
• Please execute this Reality Check when you feel that your idea has solidified to some extent.

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Think radically: Idea Overview §

• First, let’s organize your current idea a little and grasp the big picture.
• Let’s start sorting out your current idea, and build a good big picture.

What are you going to do? §

- What are you trying to do? Instead of goals and objectives, state specifically the system you are going to build or the investigation you are going to conduct.
    - In a nutshell, it is about synchronicity in class.
    - In class, enable students to receive information asynchronously while maintaining good synchronicity.
        - "Good synchronicity"
    - Achieve synchronous/pseudo-synchronous student communication through pen writing.

    - Receive classes through video on iPad, asynchronously

- What are you going to build? What are you going to improve? What are you going to investigate?
    - The part of the class that focuses on lectures
- Does your description have enough specificity for others to understand the system you are going to build?

Why is it so important? §

- How important is the problem your idea is trying to solve?
- What impact would you offer if you make your idea happen?
- What new insight would you bring after your survey?

Who cares? §

- Who gets benefits from your idea?
- Who are the target users and under what contexts/scenarios?
- How many are such users? How often or likely are the target users under the context/scenario you are thinking of? Isn't your target user population too narrow?

How new? §

- What's new in your idea?
- What novel knowledge and technology would you offer through this research?

How technologically new if you create a new system or algorithm? §

- What technological novelty would you offer?
- Why is existing technology insufficient?
- What is the technological novelty profs in EEIC can appreciate.

• Once you have answered all of the above questions, please move on to the Execution Strategy.
  • When you have answered all questions, please move on to Execution Strategy.

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Execute Logically: Execution Strategy §

• Next, let’s consider how to implement your idea concretely.
• Now you are asked to think about how you can turn your idea into reality.

How will you implement your system and/or run your study? §

- How will you turn your idea into reality?
- What existing technology can you utilize?
- What novel technology will you have to develop?
- What methods will you use for your survey? And why?

What will you need to build your system and/or run your study? §

- What equipment and facilities will you need to build your system?
- What services will you use for your survey? How will you collect data?### What are the classics?

• What are typical or common solutions?
• What pros and cons do they have?

Who are competitors? §

• What are competitors’ technologies?
• What are the latest related technologies?
• What is strongly relevant research?
• What pros and cons do they have?

What are your advantages? §

• What merits does your idea have compared to existing technologies?
• If you say “efficient/efficiency,” what efficiency do you mean? Can you really measure it?
• If you say “optimal or optimized,” what exactly will you optimize and with what metrics can you confirm? Can you show that what you get is really “optimal” (i.e., nothing else is better)?
• If you say “best,” with what metrics can you confirm that what you get is the best? Can you show that what you get is really “best” (i.e., nothing else is better)?
• If you say “intuitive,” how quantitatively can you show such intuitiveness?

How will you confirm your advantages? §

• Through what experiments can you show the advantages of your idea?
• What can you hypothesize that would be improved and how?
• What will you measure? Can you measure them objectively?
• What conditions do you think should be considered? How would you narrow them down? Why?
• Are the conditions fair? How do you justify?
• Who are your participants? Aren’t they different from your target users?

How do you make this happen? §

• Describe your plan so that you can finish everything one month before the final deadline (e.g., thesis submission).

• Is there any other important deadline or milestone in your plan? If so, what and when?

• Itemize 5-7 major action items and when you will start and end for each.

• Can you really follow your plan? If there is a stretch, which goals should you reconsider?

• When you have answered all the questions, please move on to the Devil’s Review.

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Criticize Deeply: Devil’s Review §

• Now you are criticizing your idea by playing a Devil’s advocate. Please answer the following questions and revise your answers above if necessary. Do not provide simple answers like “shouldn’t be an issue.” You must provide justifications and explanations for your argument of “no issue”.

Why is your idea so important? §

• How important is the problem your idea is trying to solve?
• What impact would you offer if you make your idea happen.- What new insights could be found from the results of the survey?

Aren’t you just building toys? §

• Aren’t we just creating things that look interesting but are not useful?
• Are there actually users who would use the system? If so, who are they and how common are they?
• Are there any useful applications in the real world? If so, what are they? If not, why do we need to develop this technology?
• Are there any things that can only be done with this system or method? If so, what are they, and how much would they benefit the users?

Aren’t you solving toy problems? §

• Is the problem you are trying to solve really important? Or are you just creating a problem for the sake of research?
• How much happier would people be if the problem is solved?

Isn’t your system just all known? §

• Is the system you are going to build just a combination of existing technologies?
• Can you create more than just the sum of the technologies? If so, what is your justification?

Aren’t you working on a small delta? §

• Is your work just a small improvement over previous work?
• If you can improve speed or accuracy, how much would it impact the users?
• What makes your work innovative rather than incremental?
• Will the utility of your system really have an impact on society?

Are you really the right person to work on this? §

• Is your idea really what we should be working on? Are there any other research groups working on similar ideas?
• Do we have any unique advantages that others do not have?
• Do we have the necessary knowledge to execute this idea? If not, what do we need to learn?

Aren’t you missing important related work? §

• Can you name a few researchers who are working on projects related to your idea?
• Have you checked recent publications at conferences?
• On the other hand, have you checked if there are similar things in older literature?
• What is the oldest paper related to your idea?

Do your limitations make your system useless in reality? §

• Does your system or experiment only work under very limited conditions?
• Can your system be deployed as it is?

Aren’t you just designing your system however you like? §

• Can you provide a theoretical justification for your system design principles?
• Do you have any rationale for your interface design?
• How would you determine parameters for your system and/or experiment? Would other researchers be convinced by your decision?

Aren’t you cheating in your evaluations? §

• Are you using evaluation metrics that are biased towards your system?

• What other evaluation metrics are available? Why aren’t you using them?- Are you not setting conditions and tasks that are advantageous for yourself?

• Have you considered other tasks and experimental conditions? If so, why aren’t you choosing them?

• If you conduct user studies, are you not selecting participants who are biased towards your experiment? Is there any discrepancy between them and your target users?

• Once you have answered all these questions, please move on to the Executive Summary.

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• Executive Summary: State Concisely
• Finally, let’s explain your idea in a concise and accurate manner.

Explain your research in 30 seconds. §

• How can you introduce and make others find your idea interesting?
• Explain the following five points in 1 or 2 sentences each, and make the paragraph around 7-8 sentences.
• What are you trying to achieve?
• What problems will you solve?
• Why is that problem important?
• What is unique about your research?
• What benefits does your idea offer?

Explain your research in one sentence. §

• Can you explain your idea in a single sentence?

• Does your description include all important keywords?

• Make sure you are not over-claiming what exactly you are going to do.

• Isn’t your description too generic? Can similar projects use the same description?

• Isn’t your description too specific or narrow?

• Once you have answered all these questions, you’re done! Well done! Please read the last section and start writing a draft for your paper!

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Congratulations! §

• That’s the end of the reality check. With a little organization and revision, you can now write a draft for your paper. The mapping between what you have written so far and the structure of the paper is roughly as follows:

• Title

  • Explain your research in one sentence.

• Abstract

  • Explain your research in 30 seconds.

• Introduction

  • Why is your idea so important?
  • Who cares?
  • What is your key scenario?
  • What is your goal?

• Contributions

  • How radical?

• Related Work

  • What are the classics?
  • Who are competitors?
  • What are your advantages?

• Implementation

  • How will you implement your system and/or run your study?
  • What will you need to build your system and/or run your study?

• Experimental Design

  • How will you confirm your advantages?