Halfway Reflection

Tenacious is a competency, in order to succeed in this class you will need to build a routine to keep up with all the work. I like to set my week up to begin looking at assignments on Tuesday and begin working on them until Thursday night so I know I turn everything in on time. Then I wait until I get out of classes Friday to take the Cupcakes, and over the weekend I'll look into my peers' posts. Learning proper time management, and keeping up with all of the work is the hardest part of this class, so having a game plan helps to be successful.
Tenacious is an attitude, I haven't always enjoyed this class. Online classes are difficult for me to focus on, but I need this class to graduate with the degrees I want so I have been focusing on going through the assignments and getting work done.
The tips that I would give to next semester students start to have a game plan. Going in with a game plan will help you feel more comfortable and even if you need to change tactics throughout the class, that's fine. Don't be afraid to ask your friends for help, I like to sit down with my friends whenever I go to write these blog posts so that I have someone around to hold me accountable for it at the moment. Lastly, get what you want out of it, most of the students who will be taking this course will probably be doing so because it is a required class for them. Since you are already paying for the class and have to pass it make sure that whenever you have an opportunity to learn a new skill that you can apply to your career you should explore it. 

Figuring Out Buyer Behavior No. 1

I decided to interview three other IA students because they will have classes, homework, clubs and IA speaker series that they are required to attend. Between the three of them, I found a common thread, keeping up with the outside of classwork and lectures were difficult for people to keep track of and were constantly rushing to get done or get to. While the syllabus pdf had all of the information on it, this pdf was difficult to access mobile and despite going over most assignments in a class by the time they left class due dates seemed distant to the students. What these students have looked to has been the college provide Outlook and Canvas Calendar, but those have not been enough for them. All three had various to-do lists and student planner apps that they used to try and get organized. The search terms most of them used were "student calendar," "student planner," "student to-do list," and various student fill in the blank terms. They all notice the need at the start of the semester when they are getting various syllabuses and once again when exam season kicks off and they feel they have to spend the majority of their time studying. Two of the three just stopped their search after a quick google search and a conversation with there friends, the third said he went to Gatorwell to try and find additional help, but they didn't have anything that worked for him. I think this leaves me in a good position to fill a need in the community that current is going unattended to because no one is going beyond the minimum to help students succeed by giving them organizational skills.  

Idea Napkin No. 1

My name is Ethan Irvin. I'm a UF mathematics major in the Innovation Academy. I have some programming experience and am comfortable speaking in large crowds and one on one. Ideally, I would want this business to help students, myself included, get more organized and help more people manage their lives. I would not be looking for a large profit, I would want to use it to build a name for myself and help others with a problem that I deal with.
I am offering a program that works as a calendar, to-do list, event planner, and journal. By putting all of their due dates, class times, exams, club events, and other activities on one platform students will be better able to plan study time and fun time by keeping an accurate record of when they need to be where.
This program would be open to anyone who wants to try it, but I would tailor it towards the average college student. Anyone taking tradition or hybrid classes that would benefit from combining all of there course work and class times onto one platform.
Students all want to be organized, but very few want to take the time to get organized, I am offering them that organization that would help them to reach their goal with practically no strain on the student.
Other programs and apps typically focus as one thing, either a calendar or to-do list, and none of the items that the university offers interact with each other. Mine would be an all-around app that was able to tie everything together by putting it on one screen, all the information you need would be kept together. 

Elevator Pitch 1

Hey, sorry I am having some difficulty uploading my video, so I'll post my script for now I will upload my script and try to have the video later tonight.

"Struggling to keep up with class, office hours, labs, homework, essays, exams, and life? Us students have the difficult task of meeting all these deadlines but no way to see them on one calendar. Well what if I told you Student Planner was a calendar, to do list, and love organizer that could save you so much time and stress! All you do is upload your syllabus and Student Planner sets all of your course homework, reading, exam, office hours, lectures, and then you can add custom events and tasks programmable with unique reminders so you never miss a deadline. That's all I've got for now, I've got to get to class."

Testing the Hypothesis Part 2

With this second round of interviews, I went out to find people who fell outside of my unmet need. I asked each of the five students about their college experience and why they wouldn't be interested in an app that helps to organize class time and homework due dates. 

The first guy I interviewed was a strictly UF Online student. He noted that because all of his lectures were online he got emails when the lectures had been posted, and then would do the homework at the same time. For all of his lectures, they would mention which assignments were due and go over them in detail. For him, it was simply a matter of making time at the end of his day to sit down and do everything in one go. 

Next, I interviewed my roommate who is in grad school here. For him, he goes to the lab every day and is in an environment where everyone around him operates on a similar schedule, and they work together as a team. With everyone doing the lab, going to lectures and discussing the assignments, he has built up a network of people who already hold him responsible for keeping up. 

I met with a girl I know who spends drop add week making her semester calendar and asked if she would be interested in this product. Surprisingly, she would prefer to organize manually. She is very detail orientated and thinks that by doing things by the hand she will better remember them, and have a more personal attachment to all of her work. 

After those three it was difficult to find someone who wasn't at least partially interested in this product student wise. So I expanded my audience. I asked two different professors to get their opinions. Similarly, they remarked on how assignment due dates weren't relevant to them, and all the timing information they need was easily programmable into outlooks calendar. Since UF gives out Outlook accounts to students and faculty they used it for every aspect of their work and were used to the program. 

Inside the Boundary: 

Who: Students across various colleges who are taking at least one in-person class. 

What: A unified calendar to show assignments, class times, office hours, and other events or agendas. 

Why: UF puts all of the necessary information to do well in classes across multiple platforms for those in in-person classes. 

Outside the Boundary:

Who: Students who are in a tight college community where information is readily shared and unified, professors and other faculty who are not taking classes, and fanatics who are have found the way that best works for them in this environment. 

What: A unified system is not needed because they already have a system in place to catch all relevant topics that my product would cover. 

Why: They either already have a group or website that they readily rely on or have devised a system that works for them. 

Solving the Problem

Looking into an opportunity that would help many students, myself included, I would sell a calendar app that takes the information from your class syllabus to input assignment due dates as well as class readings and exams. The users would only need to specify how long their semester is and when class time is then an interactive calendar would be generated. Having this app downloaded onto the student's phone they would also be able to input other activities that they would normally mark onto their calendars. By showing all their class times, assignment due dates, and any event they intend to go to students would have a better understanding of how they need to manage their time instead of cramming at the last minute. Or if students prefer to cram last minute, they would know when the last minute is. Students will be able to set reminders for each class's homework and go through and edit unique reminders for those assignments that might take a little longer to complete.

Testing the Hypothesis Part 1

After talking with some other UF students, I noticed that I was not the only one who had trouble keeping up with assignment due dates. Students on the University of Florida campus are unable to easily form a semester calendar that includes all of their assignment due dates and class times onto one calendar app because the resources provided by UF do not interact with each other and filling in this much information is a long process. This would mainly be for students because they are the ones who are trying to balance class times and homework on two different forums, and I am unfamiliar with how professors are expected to organize themselves and what resources they have available to them. While I am only familiar with how UF resources work I imagined other college students across the country might also have this problem. I understand that there are a few students who already take the time to do this on their own, but that is the slim minority and even they might be interested in a faster way of organizing themselves. Taking the time to plug in all of these due dates is a long process that isn't difficult, but something that students don't seem to want to do for themselves. However, this is only useful for people who have at least one class in person, as online classes have no set class time and you already need to be on the classes website to get lectures, but having a set calendar for multiple classes each semester would help them organize when to do lectures and homework. For most of the students I have talked to, they are simply uninterested or don't have the will to sit down for an hour to set a calendar with reminders for when assignments and classes are. Some already take the time to do this, but even they favored the idea of a program that did this for them.

Identifying Opportunities in Economic & Regulatory Trends

Looking for opportunities on a larger scale than what I recently been posting about helps to understand that there is a whole world of opportunities to explore. The first topic that I want to look at is how tobacco shops can no longer serve people under 21. I noticed this change in all of the tobacco shop windows within the last few weeks. Now that these tobacco shops can no longer serve those underage, they could adapt to becoming the adult one-stop-shop. Grouping all the adult products in one space would save people time when it comes to planning weekend parties or relaxing evenings. By including these items to the companies' inventory they will attract a much larger crowd. 

Another regulatory change that we can imagine to be coming to Florida soon as it has already gotten approved in 17 other states and Washington, D.C. is recreation marijuana. Once it becomes legal in Florida there will need to be companies that adopt weed into their inventory, distribution center for if, and new businesses are likely to come up from this. While the end product will be for the consumer the opportunity lies with these new companies competing for the consumers.  

Moving on from opportunities coming from regulatory changes, we are looking into opportunities that are coming from economic changes. As technology is rapidly expanding forms of payment are becoming more diversified, faster, and easier than ever. Everywhere we look we notice different money sending apps that are only applicable to a select few vendors and programs so have a universal form a payment would greatly increase check out times and viable customers. I saw a news article about how companies are trying to find a way to bring all of the banking and money sharing apps onto one interactive system. 

As global warming becomes more noticeable, our crops are starting to suffer. Due to rising temperatures, and more destructive and less predictable weather food prices are on the rise. There is an opportunity for more greenhouses and other climate control devices to be implemented. Farmers would be the prototypical customer, and in areas where agriculture is on a decline having some form of protection would help to boost security.