Financial Information Resources:

Getting good information from resources is as important as knowing what you're looking for; it is possible to get inaccurate or misleading information from some sites, so here are a list of great resources for getting information about financial matters, the stock trade, and business performances.

1.

Forbes Finance

http://www.forbes.com/finance/

Forbes is a great place to get articles on many different topics, but they really shine when it comes to getting the latest news in the financial sector with as little bias as possible.

2.

New York Stock Exchange

https://nyse.nyx.com/

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is one of the world's largest financial stock trading institutions, and is one of the most used. While mirror sites may have more interactive information, the NYSE can guarantee accurate and timely information, in addition to some news articles.

3. 

Nasdaq

http://www.nasdaq.com/

The Nasdaq is similar in many ways to the NYSE, but it provides information the NYSE might not and lacks information that the NYSE may have. Using these two sites as dual-resources can increase understanding of exactly what is happening, and how it relates to financial matters.

4.

Google Finance

http://www.google.com/finance

While this may not be an 'official' financial institution, Google's finance page is excellent for storing personal stock lists, looking up information on companies and finding links to news articles related to a particular stock. It is a personal favorite of mine, but many other similar websites exist as well, such as Yahoo Finance.

Thoughts on Final Presentations:

Many of the presentations were excellent, but I found the ones that conveyed their information with some excitement or humor to be the ones that I truly remember vividly. The variance in presentation skills were enormous, as some presenters were clearly polished and spoke with genuine ease, while others struggled with not only language, but general presentation skills (not just reading off slides, eye contact, interaction with audience etc.)

I would say my personal performance was well-received, but I thought that the presentation from my group as a whole was too short, as we focused quite a bit on just getting through the information that we were required, and left out some details that would have been interesting/enlightening to the audience.

Story Board

Stress Avoidance Man
Bob was always stressed. No matter how much he worked or planned ahead, stress would always be there to make his day worse. One day, Bob went to the movies to relax; he watched the newest superhero blockbuster, but he couldn't seem to watch the movie. As he sat their, he realized that he could somehow know what was going to cause him stress for the rest of the week (call to action/threshold). He left from his chair and ran from the superhero movie, and began working on avoiding these destined events. As they neared he dodged them by being prepared for his mother getting sick, his client changing requirements or his car engine failing (challenges). This power came at a price, though. He felt the stress of the next week at all times (abyss/revelation), but Bob learned to control it and ignore the problems when he did not need to focus on them(transformation/atonement). Bob became a superhero of his own, Stress Avoidance Man, and only used his power for good. The end.

Win As Much As You Can:

What makes a good teammate?
In this context, a good teammate is one that you trust; further than that, though, there needs to be mutual trust among all members of the group. That is, every person must trust everyone else, and everyone must trust that everyone else trusts each other and so on ad infinitum. The reason for this is as such: if one person does not believe that you trust another person, they may act assuming that you will act to better your own interests because of a distrust for the tertiary individual. A mutual trust will go a long way in making the team outcome as high as possible, as if every person is undeniably honest, you can assume that every game will result in +1 for every member of the group.

What makes a bad teammate?
A bad teammate is contradictory to the above. They may not necessarily be the one who chooses to hurt the team's interests to better themselves, but if they are untrustworthy, others may try to react to them whether they intend on hurting the team themselves. Another kind of inadequate teammate is the one who takes a slight mistrust of a person and decides that they must compensate for this trust by making the action that they suspect of others.


Possible Improvements:
Make the game sequential: In economics we have learned quite a bit about game theory, and in doing so we have learned that not every game should be simultaneous. By making the game sequential, it is possible to act optimally and lead to an outcome which will be best for everyone.
Add tangible rewards for performing well as a team: The nature of this game makes it so that many people will not consider the gravity of each round, so it would help overall team performance if there were rewards for playing optimally.
Add tangible consequences for performing poorly as a team: As above, it is important that players internalize the mistakes they have made, and by adding some external punishment for betraying teammates, players should consistently play honestly.
Allow players to vote people out of the group after a few rounds: By allowing teams to remove dishonest players from their group, it may be possible to triage the losses incurred by the misfortune of having such an untrustworthy individual on the team.
Remove the equilibrium for individual success: Observant players will notice that it is always equal or better for the individual player to choose the first option, which is the worst for the group. By increasing the group payout to +2 if every person cooperates, this equilibrium will be removed.

Idea generating techniques:

In class we made some physical representations of our idea, Timetraxx. I made a disorganized desk covered in sticky-notes as I felt that such an app could displace the need for note-taking of this type, while others built representations of computers, clocks, and other related ideas. I also started designing a possible logo for the company as we were getting low on time and I wanted to play around with what such a thing would look like. My sketch looked something like this:

(note, this is a bad MS paint rendition, and I am not an artist)

Then we began making an idea generating matrix. Mine is shown below.

	Experience 1	Experience 2
Employer	Dynamic Shift Scheduling  -allow quick changes and  notifications to employees (one-click functionality) -automatically reformat other  shifts based on pre-entered  constraints when one work  schedule changes (Dynamic data-updates)	Allow quick communications -features to allow employers to send  company-wide communications  as well as individual correspondances (TimeTraxx MassMail(tm*)) -Real-time update of schedules and the ability to change schedules at any time (TimeTraxx ScheduleSwap)
Employee	Ease of use -allow the application to run  on many different devices (Android/iOS/Windows versions) -have automatic notifications  for the employee to remind/  update employee (TimeTraxx ReliableReminder) -Simple to use and uncluttered  graphical user interface (TimeTraxx mobile App)	Allow employees to swap schedules -It is relatively common for employees to  take someones shift for them, and this  could be easily reflected in such a program  that would allow the employees to make the  update themselves when allowed (TimeTraxx ScheduleSwap)
Personal user	Reminders -allow user to be reminded of  events that they have entered  into the program (TimeTraxx Notification Assistant)	Everything in one place -Personal users can keep track of their  schedules, due dates, and other important, time-sensitive information on the app (TimeTraxx CentralCommand easily navigable start page)

* not really a trademark.

TimeTraxx MindMap

Creating a mind map made it easy to visualize all of the ways that the ideas our group has come up with can be added onto and changed. The complexity of such a map (which truly only brushes the surface) is astounding considering all of the other possible paths that could have been explored.

Project Title:
Timetraxx

Project Description:

Timetraxx is an online application for use by managers and other event and operational planners to help with the task of managing schedules such as work shifts that would alleviate the daunting task of complex input and dynamic administration.

Project Target:

Managers of large companies with many workers and dynamic shifts

ex.

Fast Food restaurants

Retailers such as Walmart

Movie Theatres

Differentiation:

The online application would allow easy input of scheduling requirements from many terminals and by many individuals, and would allow for real-time notifications of changes to all concerned, as well as the ability to check schedules from many mobile devices. We could differentiate ourselves by not charging a per-employee rate, and having easier-to-use user interfaces. Once a company is in our databases, it should not require much cost to add an employee to the system, and would alleviate the need to have pricing increase with number of employees.

Competition:

ShiftPlanning

MindBodyOnline

ShiftPlanning targets managers of firms with dynamic scheduling, as we would. They make money by charging a rate based on the number of employees that the system is set up to handle, and market themselves as an easy online solution to scheduling.

MindBody is a tailor-made business management and scheduling application which targets similar markets as Timetraxx and ShiftPlanning. They provide four separate packages based on number of employees, and differentiate themselves by the custom-made business managing tools for each subscriber.

GROUP MEMBERS:

Aaron Knutson: aknutson@hawk.iit.edu

Likes computers.

Rytis (Ray) Bizauskas: rbizausk@hawk.iit.edu

Interested in CS, IT, and Business.

Sam (Shane) Pung: spung@hawk.iit.edu

On the IIT baseball team