Final Project

Over the past 10 weeks, you’ve learned to gather and evaluate information, write short- and long-form informative and persuasive stories and deliver them in a variety of ways — through text, audio, image, video and the Web. Now’s your chance to take all of those skills and use them by working together as a lab to develop your own product.

For your final project, each lab will envision and create an online and mobile information product that can be marketed to a specific audience. Instead of pitching your idea to a group of experts as you would have under our original schedule, you’ll make a video showcasing your idea and strategy, and a group of experts — and your classmates! — will critique your strategy, content, design and business models. The group of experts is like your “angel investors” (think Shark Tank) who will be frank about whether your idea and execution has the potential to thrive as a business.

This project allows you to frame your own capstone experience to apply what you’ve learned in J202. It can be among the most challenging assignments you’ve ever encountered, but you’ll also find it among the most rewarding. You’ll have the additional challenge of pulling it all off remotely, but right now, that’s how professionals in the real world are doing it. We know from past semesters that students come away with a sense of accomplishment in having created something innovative and engaging, and we’re confident you will, too.

One of the underlying elements of this project is how you work together as a team — it is key to your eventual success. You’ll all work together as a big group, but each member of the lab will be part of one of four small teams. To succeed in the current media environment, you have to learn how to collaborate and communicate effectively in a group. In many ways, this is a skill as important for the field as writing a lead. You’ll be using tools like Slack, GoogleMeet and whatever else helps you connect as a group.

This is a chance for you to think boldly about all that you’ve learned this semester. We’re not telling you what to write and produce. Unlike many of the assignments you’ve done this semester, this is a time when you have a blank canvas and get to take it from the first creative spark to the finished product. These opportunities don’t present themselves often, so use this freedom to your advantage.

How It Works

Each lab develops an idea for an online and mobile informational product. For instance, Lab Awesome may pitch and develop a site to promote blood donations in Wisconsin and a mobile app to help people find a place to donate blood.

Four teams within each lab will take responsibility for different areas of the project, and each student is assigned to one team. Every team has one lead coordinator who works with the TA to ensure progress on the project.

Strategy and Project Management Team: develops overall strategy, coordinates workflows
Platform Team: develops WordPress site for project, envisions other apps and tools
Content Team: coordinates all content, including assignments, editing and gathering needed assets
Pitch, Promotion & Revenue Team: develops a plan to fund and promote project, and sells the project in a final pitch video

In addition to team responsibilities, each student completes:

one Q&A (based on one interview)
one alternative story form
one piece of strategic communication content
two multimedia packages (either informative or persuasive) in pairs or groups of three

By Friday, April 3, at 11:59 p.m.

Complete three assignments:

Fill out this form to let your TA know your preferences for a team assignment.
Generate at least one idea for your lab’s project, so you have options to discuss and decide on during your meeting on Monday, April 6, from 10-11 a.m.
Send any questions you have about the project to Stacy, Gill or your TA.

Details

Here are some examples of well done final project sites and projects from past J202 students:
Refridge
TeamUp
Optimum Mentality
BrandGram