Interview with Abdul Mahdi

• How do you manage all of your tasks? (word document, personal calendar, planner, etc.)
I use a combination of all the above but mostly google calendar


• What do you like about your current task management system?
It alerts me when it’s time for a different task and keeps me very organized



• What do you dislike about your current task management system?
Because of the alerts it at times disrupts meetings



• What parts of task management are easy/difficult?
Google calendars are very easy to set up and most importantly, it syncs with all my calendars….no difficulties yet


• What would be the ideal task management service/app?

I am a bit torn because I like the alerts of Google Calendar but dislike the fact that it disrupts other meetings…So some kind of silent alert (which I’m not sure how it’ll work) would be nice.

Interview with Cannon Peterson 
Restoration Manager at NorthStar Cleaning & Restoration

• How do you manage all of your tasks? (word document, personal calendar, planner, etc.)
Memory and excel sheet with list of tasks and when I need to do them


• What do you like about your current task management system?
Everything is easy to read and check, and is always available to me at my desk.


• What do you dislike about your current task management system?
Adding significant information can be hard, as excel is not the best medium for keeping track of long text.



• What parts of task management are easy/difficult?
Adding new entries and removing old ones takes longer than it might, and I do not get reminders.


• What would be the ideal task management service/app?

Ideally everything would be done for me somehow, but realistically I like my current way. If I were going to improve something, I would like to have reminders and be able to access my plans anywhere.

John Pergrossi
Regional Actuary at Travelers Insurance

• How do you manage all of your tasks? (word document, personal calendar, planner, etc.)
I made my own desktop application. I add tasks and times to it on my desktop, and it reminds me with a noise when something is coming up.


• What do you like about your current task management system?
It is quick to create tasks and anything that I do not like I can change myself.


• What do you dislike about your current task management system?
Nothing currently, although I haven't played with having it alert my phone.



• What parts of task management are easy/difficult?
Since I am near my desk consistently, having my to-do list on my desktop means I never forget. However, when it gets full, my desktop can get cluttered.


• What would be the ideal task management service/app?
I need something that isn't clunky. Most of the bigger calendar applications online like Google Calendars are hard to use for me because I have to learn their system, download them or open a browser and load their page, so having it on my desktop at all times is nice because I know exactly how it works. The only thing to change would be presets, so adding common tasks is immediate.

Interviewing

After doing an interview with Abdul Mahdi (which is posted on the TimeTraxx Google+ Community page) I had a few thoughts that I wanted to put down in some concrete form.

1. Getting an interview can be difficult

There are some ways to mitigate this issue, and we went over a few in class. The one that really hold true, in my experience so far, is that it is important to 'rope them in' before you actually get to the meat of any request. When I emailed Abdul Mahdi and others about helping us with some primary research in time management, I initially sent a large wall of text, with many qualifiers (...If you have time, etc.) and posted the questions in initial email if I was going to be unable to meet them in person. I didn't get a single response that way, but when I sent a short message along the lines of "hey, would you be willing to answer some questions about xyz" I found that it was much easier to start a conversation, and once started, people don't tend to just stop talking to you.

2. Knowing the interviewee is important

I only vaguely know Abdul Mahdi from some of our meetings and his having come to the bus100 class I took last semester. However, when I emailed some people that I knew better, I found that responses were faster in coming, and I am currently speaking with some faculty that worked at my high school.

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.