FacePamphlet: Implementing a Simple Social Network

Summary	FacePamphlet: a simple social networking application. Makes use of objects, GUI interactors, simple data management (HashMaps and ArrayLists), and solid understanding of control flow to make an application that manages a "light" version of FaceBook (hence the name of the assignment).
Topics	Objects, GUI interactors, data collections (HashMaps and ArrayLists), understanding of control flow and state.
Audience	Could be used in a CS1 or CS2 course (depending on how much complexity the instructor wanted to add). The version written here was used as a final assignment in a CS1 course.
Difficulty	This is an advanced CS1 assignment, taking 1 to 2 weeks for a CS1 student.
Strengths	Topic of assignment (social networks) is something students are excited about and feel empowered by when they realize they can create such an application themselves (and show it to their friends). While stressing solid data collection manipulation and state-based control-flow, the assignment also has many potential ways it can be modified or extended, with open-ended options to let students really explore.
Weaknesses	There are lots of cases to consider in the interaction a user may have with the application. While dealing with these cases is not difficult, it just requires that students think about all of them and results in a long handout to explain all the possibilities.
Dependencies	The assignment presented here relies on the ACM Java libraries, but it could be modified to just use standard Java if one were so inclined. The assignment also requires students to understand an event-driven model as a result of the GUI interaction model.
Variants	You can really come up with whatever kinds of variants of the social networking application you like by (for example) changing what information is stored/displayed in a user profile, how the GUI is displayed, what links in the network represent, the addition of user groups (i.e., class hierarchy of profile types), file read/write of the network, etc. At the end of the day, the "social network" is really a graph, so in the most general sense this program is really about the creation/manipulation of a graph and you could have many application "themes" that use the basic format of the assignment.

Social networking is a topic that many students are actively engaged in (some might even argue too engaged in). In any case, it is a topic that really captures student interest in a programming course as it provides an opportunity for students to be the implementor of something that they have been a comfortable user of for some time. Moreover, it provides a rich context for exercising many programming concepts (control flow, state, data management, object-oriented design, event-driven programming, etc.).

This assignment was given as the final programming project in a quarter-long CS1 course using Java and the ACM libraries. The assignment ranked second in terms of student end-of-term surveys as their "most liked" assignment (out of seven assignments in the course). It ranked behind "Breakout" and ahead of "NameSurfer", both of which are previous Nifty Assignments. Interestingly, however, there was a gender bias in these preferences. While the overall class was roughly 40% female and 60% male, FacePamphlet (as opposed to either Breakout or NameSurfer) was disproportionately preferred as a favorite assignment by women, as the following break down shows:

Of students whose favorite assignment was...	% female	% male
Breakout	33 %	67 %
NameSurfer	36 %	64 %
FacePamphlet	42 %	58 %

The handout for the FacePamphlet assignment is available here.

Thh "starter bundle" containing the starting code is here.

An applet of the basic program is available below. (Note: The applet below only supports two profile pictures/images: "StanfordLogo.jpg" and "StanfordTree.jpg"). To run the extended version of the program that support loading and saving of social networks, you should use the demo available in the file FacePamphlet-withLoadSave.zip.

The version of the assignment presented here focuses on control flow (while keeping track of minimal application state), data structure manipulation (HashMaps and ArraysLists), and GUI interactors. The assignment could be expanded/modified along a number of different dimensions, such as:

• File management: the current assignment write-up describes an optional extension: the ability to save and load social networks. This extension can exercise file management and (string) data manipulation skills. From past experience, many students are quite capable of implementing the save/load functionality, so making this a required part of the assignment (and giving students a few extra days to do the assignment) is quite reasonable.
• Media Computation: while currently each user profile only has a single image associated with this, students focused on media computation could allow profiles to have much richer media associated with them (including providing tools for the manipulation of such media in situ).

• Support for communities and other entities in the social network: interestingly, a community in a social network can be though of as just another sort of user profile: the community has some profile information associated with it (e.g., name, image, etc.) and a list of members (i.e., friends). In this sense, it creates the opportunity to push object-orientation via an object hierarchy to keep track of entities (e.g., users, communities, discussion groups, etc.) in the community.

• GUI development: the simple GUI in the application here does require students to be aware of event-driven programming, but also provides a context for a variety of extensions (both programmatically and aesthetically). For example, this program easily lends itself to the Model-View-Controller pattern (although the version described in the handout here doesn't push that). Also the social networking domain is rich enough that it can provide a good context for the usage of many other GUI components if desired. For example, students could make the names in the "Friends" list interactive, by making them "clickable" links -- that is, when a name in a friend list is clicked on, the application should automatically perform a "Lookup" on that person.

• Graph algorithms and theory: it goes without saying that this assignment provides a platform for more mathematically minded students to consider many extensions via graph algorithms (e.g., path finding, clique discovery, etc.)

Broader Social Narrative

Extra info about this assignment: