This submission considers several possible enhancements to AAC systems motivated by how people may want to use these systems. This is not directly in the area of any of the faculty panelists, although I suspect that all of the panelists could provide useful feedback in general on the design and development of this research agenda. As such, I would expect the student to use the opportunity to explain the problem and approach, and get feedback as much on this presentation (and general next steps), as anything else. Submission is 3 pages (instructions limited to 2 pages).

This is a very important problem that has not been resolved. The candidate is taking a very systematic approach to addressing the problem, and I think the work is quite promising.

Project summary is somewhat densely written, and is over length (3 vs. 2 pages).

The candidate might consider a higher-level title for work presented here. While the title looks appropriate for the AAC literature, the detailed nature of it will likely not be absorbed quickly by those in the ASSETS community.

I am concerned about what the candidate is hoping to get out of the DC, namely "help us to verify these three design assumptions". I don't think the DC will have that expertise. Nor will the DC be in a position to provide "assistance in conducting a broad and accurate review of the prior and related work, especially in the fields outside of AAC". I think the DC will, however, be in a position to help frame usability evaluations of the candidate's prototype.

The candidate's fit with the DC re his PhD timeline is not great. His cover letter talks about graduating a year from the DC. On that front, it is not clear to me that the DC will have much opportunity to help shape the research. To design and conduct thorough usability studies, and then to write up a full dissertation and defend it is more than one year of work.