NASA Comet Detection UI Design Challenge

Welcome to the “NASA Comet Detection UI Design Challenge”! The scope of this challenge is to create a responsive minisite for the NASA challenges, that will be hosted on Topcoder in the next months. Topcoder plans to run an ideation challenge and that will be followed by a marathon match challenge.

CHALLENGE OBJECTIVES

• Responsive Web Application
• To create 2 screens (desktop + mobile)
• To provide complete information about the challenges NASA that will run on Topcoder
• Blend Topcoder and NASA branding as this will be public-facing for both Topcoder and NASA marketing teams to use

Round 1

Submit your initial design for a Checkpoint Feedback:

• Landing Page NASA Comet Detection (Web)

Round 2

Submit your Final Design plus Checkpoint Updates:

• Landing Page NASA Comet Detection (Web + Mobile)

PROJECT OVERVIEW

• The purpose of this page is to have one place where the data scientists (marathon match) competitors can find all they need to know about the NASA Comet Detection challenges that will be run on Topcoder. We are only looking for a simple single page that will fit all the information related to the event (as listed below).
• Both NASA and Topcoder marketing teams will use this page to promote it in their communities to increase awareness and participation
• The information should be easy to scan at a glance so the readers can quickly get a good understanding of the problem

USER STORY

• Name: Mike
• Occupation: Topcoder Data Scientist Competitor
• Goals:     
  • Quickly learn about this new exciting project from NASA     
• Frustrations:     
  • Can’t find all the information about the challenges in one place
• Wants:     
  • A page to learn fast and stay updated on these new NASA data science challenge

AUDIENCE

• Topcoder Data Science members who wish to compete on the NASA Comet Detection Challenges
• NASA Marketing team and their community who are following along
• Anyone online who might be interested to read about this interesting challenges
• Users will land at this page, either from social media or an email marketing campaign

PROJECT BACKGROUND
The Solar and Heleopshperic Observatory (or SOHO) telescope was deployed in 1995 as a joint project between NASA and the ESA to study our sun more closely. It is considered one of the successful NASA missions of all time, and has about 15 different instruments onboard.

The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) is an instrument on SOHO, which is made up of 3 coronagraph telescopes. This project’s focus will be on images collected by the sensitive C2 camera on the LASCO, which features an occulting disk. This disk blocks out the sun so that the camera is not blinded. Competitors can read more about it here.

NASA and the ESA are particularly interested in the Category C comets, as well as non-group comets. Category C comets are quite dim, and are thus difficult to detect with human eyes. Non-group comets are not related to any other comet and are estimated to be 5% of all comets. They are completely random in location and timing, unlike comet families which we can predict WHERE they will show up, but not when. We are guessing that most non-group comets are also Category C comets.

We will run an ideation challenge, which is a research phase for the members to figure out the best way to detect Cat A, B, and C comets. While special emphasis will be placed on detecting Category C and non-group comets, competitors will also be expected to detect Cat A and B comets.

Then, we will run a marathon match for the members to build their solutions using publically available data from the LASCO instrument on the SOHO telescope. Official comet discovery credit will be given to competitors whose algorithms identify previously unobserved comets!

To sum it up:

• The purpose of this project is to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) tool that will help astronomers detect very faint comets that approach the sun, referred to as “sungrazing comets”.
• Scientists at NASA want to improve their ability to detect very dim “category C” comets, as well as non-group comets (comets that travel alone)
• This tool will also be able to reduce noise in the image data
• Harvard LISH  is going to help with the scoring and data analysis

DESIGN GOAL & PRINCIPLES

• Simple and clean design over complex and flashy
• Content hierarchy - think about the priority of information. What are the most important things for the user? The user should be able to check this page and easily understand what the program is about and what information is available.
• Topcoder and NASA branding are mandatory

SCREENS REQUIREMENTS
Landing Page / Minisite:
In this challenge we need to design a page for the NASA Comet Detection ideation and data science challenge series. This page will contain all the important information a person needs to know to start competing. The landing page will live under the Topcoder site, so you can reuse the Topcoder navigation and footer.

The landing page will have to include the content for the following sections:

1. Overview
2. Details
3. Want to Help Detect Comets?
4. Resources

Description and sample content for each section:
 0. Page title “NASA Comet Detection”; Tagline: “Over $50,000 in prizes!!!”

1. Overview:
We are giving you a chance to develop an algorithm to identify new comets and get official discovery credit! The NASA Comet Detection challenge series will include an idea generation challenge plus a marathon match or data science challenge to get solutions built. Don’t miss this amazing chance! If you’re not already a Topcoder member, register for free here to take part.

2. Details:
Challenge Information
Idea Generation Challenge:  November 1-15, 2021
Marathon Match Challenge: December 1 - 15, 2021

Prize Structure
You can use a simple table representation to show the prizes or anything else you see fit.

• 1st place: $12,000
• 2nd place: $10,000
• 3rd place: $10,000
• 4th place: $8,000
• 5th place: $5,000
• 6th place: $4,000
• 7th place: $3,000
• 8th place: $2,000
• 9th place: $1,000
• 10th place:$500

3. Want to Help Detect Comets?
All you need to do to be a part of this challenge is this:

1. Be a Topcoder member. It’s quick and free to sign up here.
2. Find the challenges to participate in here.

4. Resources
This section will have several useful links and videos for members to learn more about Topcoder and the NASA Comet Detection. We’ll continue to add great content here to help you be successful.

Topcoder Resources:

• What are Topcoder challenges?
• How to win Topcoder Data Science Challenges

NASA Resources:

• Lasco Cornograph
• Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

We’d like to have at least 5 bullet points for each section so feel free to add other links.
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If you have any other ideas about how to make this page better, we’re excited to see them! You are also free to play with the order of the content, the content is just for reference.

DEVICE SPECIFICATIONS

• Desktop: width: 1440 px x height as much as needed
• Mobile (responsive application): width: 320 px x height as much as needed. You should export your designs for presentation and in Marvel at 2X.

BRANDING GUIDELINES
In this challenge you should follow both Topcoder and NASA brands. What does this mean to you?

• Follow Topcoder branding for font typography, buttons, image usage, layouts.
  • Branding guidelines about Topcoder typography can be viewed here (use Barlow Condensed and Regular font for the headings and Roboto font for the paragraphs)
  • Download the Topcoder GUI KIT from here (Sketch only) or check elements in the Marvel project shared above.
  • Content width should be 1280px or 1024px as shown here
• Follow NASA branding for colors, visual story and theme. You can use their guidelines from here.
• Download the NASA logo from here.
• Download the Harvard LISH logo from here.

Important to know:

• We have previously run similar projects for our customers like you can see here for Alef or Streamflow Forecast Rodeo so you can use those landing pages as inspiration in big lines.
• Note: our brand is adjusting, meaning that we are moving away from large spacings between sections and lots of large images which end up adding too much scrolling for the user, so we would like to show the information in a compact format. Good examples of pages that are like this are Alef, Start and Learn pages.
• In addition, the majority of the users are laptop users so look to show as much useful information as you can above the fold for laptop size (768px).

STOCK ARTWORK

• Stock Photos are allowed but only from the websites with photos free for commercial use from those allowed by Topcoder (Public Domain Archive, Pexels and Unsplash). You can also use any photos from the NASA Site.
• Icons: we will share them on forums. Only Streamline icons are allowed or those taken from the GUI KIT.

FINAL DELIVERABLES
Create an archive with all 4 items below:

• An archive called Source.zip file to include:
  • All original vector source files created in Sketch, XD, Figma,etc.
•  An archive called Submission.zip file to include:
  • All your design files in PNG or JPG format
• Your declaration files to include any notes about fonts usage and your Marvel prototype link
• Create a JPG preview file of 1024 x 1024 px