Research Plan

Title: Task management


Topic Area: User methods on task management

Frame Your Problem

Stakeholders - IIT managing staff and/or faculty

Objectives 
• Identify how (and why) people organize the way they do.
• Identify what people want from a task management app.
• Identify user reactions to timetraxx's idea and features.

Research Questions

• What does a person (dis)like about their current task management style?
• What parts of task management are easy/difficult?
• If they have not searched for a task mgmt solution online, why not?
• How much benefit would timetraxx give if they could use it?
• What would be the ideal task management service/app?

Research Methods:

• Interview participants with the above questions
• If a participant is willing, have participant self-document his/her "tasking" to primarily find out inefficiencies/difficulties in the process

Use of Time Management Utilities

Reasons for use of different Time Management Services and Techniques

Stakeholders: 

Busy Individuals, Friends, Coworkers, Employees, Students, Superiors, Subordinates, Business Ownership.

Objectives:

Identify reasons for the use of certain time management techniques or services to get to the center of why busy individuals find themselves unable to correctly organize their thoughts and responsibilities in order to build a services that caters to the real needs of these same people, so that they will continue to use the service rather than falling back into old habits.

Research Questions:

Why do those studied use certain techniques or services?

What makes time management difficult?

What features would ease the use of time management software?

Why do those studied not use certain software or services to help with time management?

Research Methods:

Identify what techniques, services, or lack thereof participants currently use.

Find themes or common occurrences and identify similarities.

Ask participants what they like about the time management system they currently use.

Ask participants what they would improve about their current time management system.

Ask participants what their ideal services would be like.

Explore what issues their past time management systems have had.

Identify reasons for lack of use for certain products or services.

Decision-Making Ability Quiz

I was scored as a 58/90 in this decision making scorecard, which was in the second of three possible groups, indicating that my decision making skills are average, but could be improved.

Your decision-making process is OK. You have a good understanding of the basics, but now you need to improve your process and be more proactive. Concentrate on finding lots of options and discovering as many risks and consequences as you can. The better your analysis, the better your decision will be in the long term. Focus specifically on the areas where you lost points, and develop a system that will work for you across a wide variety of situations.

 The biggest amount of slack came from the section of the decision making process that revolved around creating a good decision making environment. I learned that I need to focus on the lead-up to a decision, possibly more than on the decision itself.

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.