What makes a good project?

In general, a good project topic includes some combination of technical challenge, business opportunity, human interest, and opportunity for students to experiment with new technologies. We would suggest aiming for at least two of these properties, perhaps three, but all four in a single project would be excessive.

Technical challenge:

There should be a variety of technical challenges within each project, so that different members of the team can focus on different aspects. A challenge that is already a focus of intense commercial competition, such as "invent a machine learning algorithm to predict stock-market prices", will be beyond the ability of undergraduates, and will lead to disappointment because the result is certain to perform poorly by comparison to the state of the art as achieved by well-funded teams of PhDs.

Business opportunity:

A novel product or business model is more interesting than a "me-too" idea. Business viability is a relatively low priority - anything with a vaguely plausible market opportunity is fine. We understand that most technical start-ups pivot from their initial pitch anyway, so we don't expect computer science students to achieve anything beyond a concept that attracts popular attention.

Human interest:

Many students appreciate the chance to think how the world can be improved through technology. We are happy to see students address problems related to disability, inclusion, or economic and social inequality - either locally, nationally or globally (note that in some years, over 50% of our undergraduates come from outside the UK).

New technology:

Almost all computer scientists are gadget freaks. They love to work with the latest hardware and systems, and those opportunities inspire some creative teams. In recent years, we have seen great projects using VR headsets, wearable devices, location technologies, microprojectors and so on. If you have a particular device you'd like to see the students use, the teams often work with technology loaned by clients. The one thing to keep in mind is that they do not have much time to acquaint themselves either with new languages or complex API stacks.