TimeTraxx Primary Research:

I have emailed Abdul Mahdi of the IIT Career Managment Center to set up an interview, and will be going in this Monday when he has scheduled hours to ask him about his use of time management tools and techniques. Regrettably, I was unable to set up the interview for this past week, and will have the interview completed before Spring Break.

Research Questions and Possible Participants:

Possible Participants:
Nik Rokop
Matt Bauer
John Twombly
Abdul Mahdi
Ryan Miller

Questions:
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.

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.