Subject Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)#

How many people will be in a team?

Teams will be mostly four people, except of course if the number of enrolments is not a multiple of 4, we will have some 3 person teams or 5 person teams.

How will teams be allocated?

Individual students will be allocated to teams, taking into account diversity within teams. People will be expected to work with people they don’t know – just like a real workplace.

Can I do the project on my own instead of in a team?

No.

If it is pass/fail, how does it count to my GPA?

If a student passes, the subject score is excluded from the GPA calculation.

If a student fails, the subject counts as a 2.

What programming languages and frameworks will we use?

Whatever is required for you to build your product! This is a real project, and you have the flexibility to make decisions about technology. We won’t be teaching any of these technologies – it’s up to you to figure them out. But we also won’t be evaluating how well you use them.

I have a clash – can I skip the studio and just catch up from my team?

Unfortunately not. The seminar and studios are the place where the groundwork is laid for the project. Studios are also the only place we run ID verified assessment in the course, which is required by UQ policy.

For the final deliverable, can we just use a prototyping tool such as Figma instead of coding?

No. See the distinction between a product and a prototype here.

Can we use no/low-code tools to implement our final product?

Yes, you can use whatever tools you would use in a real project. This IS a real project.

Can we use AI-based programming tools, such as Github Copilot or Canvas?

Yes. See the COMP1100/7110 generative AI policy.

So we can use generative AI however we want?!

No! You can use it anywhere where it would be sensible in a real startup project. I think we all agree that fabricating customer interview data for a startup would be a stupid and unethical thing to do. Investors would dump our project like hot coal if they found this out. So, you cannot use generative AI for this.

We also dissuade teams from using generative AI to do things like analyse interview data and compile statistics from it. Language models are not good at things like this, don’t save much time, and simply mislead us. Investors would we wise to dump our project if they found out we didn’t analyse our own interview data.