Wednesday, April 29, 2015

The Tree Boss

I have been working landscaping for 4 years now at a place in Big Sky called Wildwood. Each season we plant an average of 160+ balled and burlapped (B&B) trees consisting of a variety of specimen. These trees are delivered to use and have on average 28 inch diameter root balls with some getting as big as 50 inches. There heavy weighing anywhere from 200lbs to 1,000lbs. In the past the processes of unloading trees, getting them into there bunks at the nursery, and eventually to a customers yard takes about 3-4 employees for each task depending on the size of the tree. This year the owner bought an attachment for the skidsteer that will allow the operator of the machine to do the work of 3 people. Being the owner of a small business you are probably seeing time after time that you are at your maximum cost with your employees and are trying to figure out ways to boost efficiency without forfeiting quality. The tree boss was the answer to these problems. Not only can the operator do the job that ounce took 3, but can handle more trees in less time. It incorporates a clever claw design that uses 3 contact points around the root ball to unsure no damage to the tree. The design of the tree boss was well thought out and improves overall safety that didn't exist before. Having this new tool for planting trees will allow us to plant better, faster, and safer. The concept of the tree boss was a great idea and have no doubts that it will live up to its potential.

Design Sprint Day 2

On day 2 of our design sprint, we as a group diverged together to talk about some of the areas we are going to focus in on for our product. During the first 10 minutes of class we talked as a group to kind of go over what we had completed the day before to get us back in the mind set of this design sprint.


For the first activity in phase 3 we started out by folding a piece of paper so that there were 8 separate boxes. From there we were told to draw different pictures in each box that described what we had come up with the day before. For each picture we only had about 30 seconds to draw the picture using stick figures. After all 8 sessions of 30 second drawings we were to chose one picture and make a 7 or 8 slide story board describing that original picture we drew. For this activity we had about 20 minutes to come up with a detailed story board of what our situation looked like. Drawing this story board was hard for me because i feel i couldn't portray onto paper what i really wanted to get across. After the 20 minutes was up, our group all hung up our story board spaced out on the wall for silent voting within the team. Pictures were spaced out several feet apart and the voting process began. We all walked around each storyboard and examined them to try and figure out their meanings and if we liked the idea we put a green sticker onto the poster. After the voting we came together and examined each poster with each other to gain more insight into everybody's thoughts process. Having the person that drew up the storyboard was very helpful in this scenario because what you might interpret could be completely different from the ideas they originally had. During our discussions new ideas came up as well as reinforcing old ideas that we have already talked about. During this phase something interesting happened. Almost our whole group had the same idea of what a product would look like that would help young adults budget their money. This may sound like a bad outcome so soon into the design sprint but i believe it gave our group an edge in the whole processes. If we were all thinking the same way without ever bringing up the idea before we started, it reinforced the idea that budgeting money is one of the most important skills to have for someone moving out for the first time. Tomorrow we will start phases 4 and 5 and hopefully be ready to start coming up with a prototype.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Design Sprint Day 1


Last week we started our group product design sprint. A design sprint is a 5 step process that aids in helping to get new ideas off the ground and pointed in the right direction. The design sprint concept was invented by Google ventures who used this same approach to problem solving by working in teams and following defined goals through the 5 phases which are understand, diverge, coverage, prototype, and test/learn. In our class product design sprint we will be doing these 5 phases in 3 days instead of the regular 5. For our product, we are to come up with something that we wish we had at our disposal after moving out. The possibilities are endless which made for an interesting first day of brainstorming ideas and what problems young people face when living on their own for the first time. We started out individually writing down what we thought were the biggest obstacles to overcome and after that came together as a group and paired up similarities. All of our ideas fell into the categories of social, financial, and home skills. We were told to find photos that described what our first year felt like living on our own and most of the photos our group shared all dealt with the issue of money. As we looked and talked over the different categories we all came to the conclusion that the hardest part about moving out was the financial aspect of it. Finding a job in a new town and managing money is most likely a concern for many people that are moving out of their parents house. We are going to focus on a product that can help young adults budget their money in a way that is easy to understand and use. For out next phase of this design sprint we will converge as a group and start eliminating areas that don't fall into the financial category.

Print Advertising

In my sales class this semester we were selling advertising space in the MSU's Exponent newspaper. We were in groups of 3-4 and were expected to sell at least one ad. I thought this was going to be a breeze even though i had no prior selling experience besides quite a bit of Craigslist sales. As i started talking to potential business's that i thought would love to advertise to college students at an unbeatable price, i kept seeing time after time businesses saying that although its an affordable option for them, they have never really had much success with running print ads weather it be newspaper or magazines. I started thinking to myself that when i pick up a newspaper or magazine i never pay much attention to the ads. Unless the magazine is focused on a hobby of mine, i generally will graze over the ad and not give much thought to it. People have become immune to print advertising and companies are looking for different ways to grab peoples attention. Digital advertising is the preferred way by many companies now because it allows them to target a larger audience and gather valuable data of how successful the advertisement was by getting immediate feedback. Maybe if the exponent were to release an app that allowed people to scroll though the schools daily news on their phones it might look more attractive for businesses to advertise in. 

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Choices



I just finished reading the book "The paradox of choice". The book is about how we are faced with many decision in our everyday life and how it might change the way we look at them either for good or for worse. All of us know that when we are shopping for things we are bombarded with so many options but never think twice as to how this may be affecting us. Having many options is a good thing because it liberates and gives you control over your needs and wants. But at the same time, with more choices comes more deliberation and this can potentially make you worse off in the long run. When you become overloaded with choices you either waste a lot of time deciding when it really doesn't matter or you might not even follow through with your options. This is what author Barry Schwartz is trying to understand that if you are given too many options people tend to become less productive and satisfied when it comes to the decisions they make. Schwartz talks about how when people are faced with too many options of something, they will sometimes forgo the options all together and not do anything about it. In his book he talks about two decision making strategies called maximizer's and satisficer's. Maximizer's are people who will extensively outweigh all of their options trying to find the best possible one at the expense of a lot of time doing so. A satisficer will look and there options and chose the one that is good enough in a timely matter and don't get so caught up with the alternatives. Throughout the book, Schwartz encourages people to more of the satisficer type when it comes to decision making because it leaves you feeling less anxious and gets rid of the choices that don't really matter.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Peer to Peer

The peer to peer marketplace has been taking off and seems to have a solid future with more and more people using these different services. The peer to peer marketplace offers different services that are cheap and convenient to the consumer but at the same time they are cutting out the middle man in the process. You can find these different services in transportation, renting, housing, skilled trades, and eventually just about anything. I am curious to see where this new marketplace will go. Will we eventually see businesses struggling due to the fact that they are trying to compete with these freelancers that don't have as high of overhead costs. Possibly, but at the same time i don't see them out preforming the cheap work/services that are being offered. It will be interesting to see where these new start up peer to peer businesses will be down the road. Do more choices make us better off? I will revisit this idea in blog posts to come.




Sunday, April 12, 2015

Old v. New Designs

This past weekend i replaced the head gaskets on my truck. I would not say that i am mechanically
inclined but i do know how to figure things out with time and research. The reason i decided to do it myself was because the shop wanted $1200 to do it. There was no way i was going to pay that much for something that's worth $2400. So i went to the auto store grabbed a shop manual and a gasket kit for a 2000 ford ranger which in total costed me $260. The 2000 ranger has a very basic engine bay and most of everything is in plain site after popping open the hood. It has a very basic push rod motor design that has been used for a long time due to its reliability. After 2004 or so a lot of car manufactures started cramming a larger overhead cam designed engine into cars making it much more difficult to do work on it yourself. The whole process took me around 30 hours to do. The designs that new cars have now a days are cheaper and probably have a better use of materials but older designs are proven and allow the average person to figure them out and work on them. 

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Buzzfeed page


5 quality hunting rifles for UNDER $400. MUST SEE

1.)  Marlin X7                                                                                              


The Marlin x7 is a fantastic hunting rifle that has the kind of quality and reliability you would expect from a $700+ rifle. You cant go wrong.

2.)  Savage Axis



The Savage Axis is a great entry level hunting rifle. It has a new modern feel and bolt design that won’t disappoint.

3.)  Ruger American


The Ruger American. One of the most popular hunting rifles out there and for a good reason.  

4.)  Remington 783


Remington is the leader in top of the line bolt-action technology. You get this proven design on a beautifully built affordable rifle. 

5.)  Mossberg 100ATR


ATR stands for All Terrain Rifle. Weighing in at just over 6.5 pounds, the 100atr makes for a great mountain rifle. With the many different caliber options and stock with iron sites, the 100atr does it all.

Monday, April 6, 2015

JJCB Building



As a class, we took a tour of the new JJCB building that is getting close to completion and will be open for classes for the 2015 fall semester. Fall semester will be my last so i am excited to be able to have a few classes in their before im done. The outside of the building looks very nice with most of the south facing side consisting of glass. The outside landscape is starting to take shape and seems like there will be lots of new trees around the building as well as some over the very large older trees that they were able to build around. When first walking into the building you enter a large common area with a fire place and cool looking staircase in the middle of the room leading up to class rooms and offices with large glass windows. The class rooms have sliding collapsible glass walls that allow each room to fully open up. Having lots of common areas as well as the collapsible walls and glass will allows for more contact with everyone in the building. I think this is a great building for the college of business because it will promote more creativity and cohesiveness within everyone in the building.