Five Questions for Good Research

1. What is the problem to be solved?
2. Who cares about this problem and why?
3. What have others done?
4. What is your solution to the problem?
5. How can you demonstrate that your solution is a good one?

1. What is the problem to be solved?

Every good research project solves some particular problem. It is very important that you be able to state your problem clearly: in one sentence, in one paragraph, in one page. If you cannot state your problem then you do not know what you are doing.

2. Who cares about this problem and why?

If you cannot answer this question then there are one of two problems. 1) The problem is not important enough for you to waste your time. 2) You have not spent enough time considering why you are working on this.

You should be able to briefly explain "why you should care" to the following audiences.

• To your advisor or others in the lab
• To your peers in your research community
• To other computer scientists
• To other colleagues in the university
• To your Mom and Dad
Many of these audiences will not understand what exactly you are doing, but you should be able to tell them why they should care.

You should also clearly understand the set of people who have the problem you are trying to solve and be aware of what their needs actually are. If you do not know the people you do not truly know the problem.

3. What have others done?

Good research never exists in a vacuum. It builds upon or responds to the work of others. You must be able to set your work in the context of other work. There are two aspects of prior work that you will need.
1. Who has previously attempted to solve this problem?

   Why did they not succeed or how is your problem a different, special case or more general case of the problem that they solved?

2. What concepts, techniques, mathematics or software have others developed that can form a foundation for your work?

4. What is your solution to the problem?

This question is answered in two ways depending on your stage of research.

Proposal stage

You should try to sketch 3-5 key insights that you believe will allow you to solve your problem better than what has been done before.

Publication stage

You should have 3-5 key ideas that address the problem. You should be able to state these ideas in 1 sentence, 1 paragraph or 1 page. You should be able to describe these ideas in sufficient depth that others who are knowledgable in your area could reproduce the work.

5. How can you demonstrate that your solution is a good one?

Just having done an interesting thing. You must be able to show that your thing is better than what has gone before.
• Your problem may have no prior existing solutions. therefore you must show that your solution really solves the problem.
• Your problem may have existing solutions in which case you must identify clear criteria for comparing two solutions. You must show a strategy for evaluating your comparison criteria. It is easiest if there objective comparison metrics. You must show that your criteria and your evaluation are valid. Does your criteria really reflect the needs of your problem and your users? Does your evaluation strategy fairly evaluate the criteria or are there statistical or methedological flaws?