Hire Day Blog - Yuvraj Dhadwal |
Hire Day Blog - Shivam Maji |
Hire day went great for me, as the CEO, I was able to hire two people. Both with high intellectual ability. We have completed every goal nearly days after being published on Trello. We need to create goals every day to keep everyone on task. Thankfully we haven’t got into any disagreements, yet, but I if we ever do, I believe we should approach them in a democratic manner. I believe dedicated workers and a strong vision can bring you places, but without a budget, you may not be able to set your plan into motion. Currently, our best qualities are workers who are highly productive and complete tasks within a few hours. Our only problem is keeping them on task once their work is completed. In the coming weeks, we plan to 3D print our drone from Tinkercad and start ordering our pieces to set up the drone.
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I was asked the same questions as everyone else waiting in line to be hired. I did not feel discriminated against in any way. It acts as our primary whiteboard and contains a step by step layout of everyone's tasks and abilities. If a disagreement happens, we have a vote on what to do next. The most important thing for a company is dedicated to workers. Without dedicated workers to help you craft and polish a bad goal into a good one and then follow it, no company will go any anywhere. The best quality of our company is organization. We have an extremely organized timetable and schedule, which allows as to keep ahead of schedule and therefore be more productive. The worst quality of our company is a bad budget. The total cost of our pieces is under $100, but with the Programmable Motherboard, it will cost well over $200. We have to get it donated, but we don’t know from whom. The next steps are to contact the Red Cross or Kaiser with our 3D Printed model and ask them what they think of the idea. Then, we will revise our original idea and start building the actual drone. The next goals to accomplish is to print out the drone model.
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Hire Day Blog - Owen Yuan |
First Interviews - Yuvraj
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I think Hire Day went really well for me. I was given a fair chance since there were only two people waiting to be interviewed in Yuvraj’s line. I will try to stay on task and not wander off because I have nothing to do. I will also tell Shivam and Yuvraj to work if I see that they have something due. If a disagreement does come up, I will either support the better argument or back off. I think the most important thing for us as of right now is a big budget since we have to make a drone out of scratch. We also need a strong vision because we do not really know what to do next. At this point, I think our company works well together, but sometimes we do not know what to do. This week, we will try to start putting our drone together and buying more things.
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On my first day of interviews, I decided it might be a good idea to interview the people at the Kaiser Hospital. When I got there and asked them if I could ask them any questions. They responded, “Sorry we are not allowed to solicit.” I took the blow and thanked them for my time. My dad consoled my by saying, “At least you asked them.” When I got home I tried contacting several hospitals online. None of them responded back sadly. In the end I just asked my neighbors and my friends my questions. I had felt rejection that day, but better to be deflated rather than inflated. Our interview questions did provide some good insight onto our project. It turns out many people like the Delta X Drone more than the Delta Y Drone which we had orginally thought would be the best. I think the best interview question for week one was, “What do you think about drones working in a hospital environment?” I believe this was our best question because it allowed for insightful opinions of futurizing hospitals. In my opinion the worst question was, “If we are going to do a plane drone should we make the drone circle downwards above the landing spot and drop with a parachute after a certain height or use a runway strip like current planes?” I believe this because we are not even going to be working with Delta Y Drones for this project. I think having better people skills, because I saw that when my friends interviewed complete strangers they got minimal answers but when I interviewed my friends we got great answers.
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First Interviews - Shivam MajiI interviewed people who were drone hobbyists and/or were in the medical profession because I felt that they were the best suited for interviewing. I felt as if I was hiring someone to work for my company, and asking them about how they would contribute to our future goals, visions and dreams. One insight that surprised me was that most people gave the same answers. The best questions that we asked was: Why haven’t other companies and/or hospitals exploited on this if the technology exists? The most useless was: What type of drone would you use for this, quadcopter or plane drones? One question that should be on the next round of interviews is: Would you like to see an app accompany this as well? I think that the best quality to have is having good interview questions, because If you don’t have good interview questions, you can’t get good reviews.
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First Interviews - Owen YuanFor my first interview, I decided to conduct it online through Google Hangouts and my parents. I chose those paths because they were the easiest to get interviews in a short time period. I’m pretty sure our questions provided some fairly useful insight. I had never thought that there would be an issue with sanitation, and my dad brought it up. The best question we asked was probably their thoughts on drones working in a hospital environment, because that provided a lot of insight on whether or not people would actually like this idea. The most useless question we asked was probably what type of drone we should use, cause we could have figured it out ourselves. In the next round, we need to figure out how to make our payload larger and make our battery life longer as well. Overall, I’m pretty sure good interview questions is the most important, and that is probably our weak link. Our strong link is probably people skills.
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Literature Review - Yuvraj
I think it is important to research early on because you will be able to know the legality of a solution before you become too invested in your prototype. For example, we thought we could work in California, but there are laws here, such as the line of sight law, which completely disproves our entire plan, while Alaska seems to check all our blocks, at the moment, even this may change in the future. I don’t think we can make a working drone out of scratch, and I think we will be able to prove it with a pre-made drone that someone else may have. A full working prototype would involve much more components rather than MVP, which is in the name. For a prototype, we would be set if we could get more money. In regards to cost, we need money to buy many different drone components that are very expensive. For example an industrial grade DGI Drone is $1.5k. An MVP would probably be an $80 drone with a compartment for holding the blood.
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Literature Review - Shivam MajiIt’s important to research the science of the product early on because that way, you can create or design a product that is possible to make. Our research changed our product by making it more efficient, helping us analyze where we will be best suited to launch our product. I, personally am extremely confident that we will either make and/or buy a working prototype by showcase. Some evidence of a MVP/Prototype is research on different types of drones and a drone that we tested in the back room. We are most likely going to buy a small drone off of Amazon, put a small parcel on it, and scale up later. One issue that we have might be the durability of the drone and controlling it. We have no idea how durable the drone is(online research is ongoing) and learning how to effectively fly and calibrate the drone will take some time. Our next tasks in the MVP is to buy a drone and learn to fly it.
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Literature Review - Owen Yuan At the start of the project, we thought we could do whatever we want and we would be allowed to do whatever we want. It turns out, there are a lot of drone regulations. In California, you are not allowed to fly a drone out of your line of sight. You also have to be certified by the FAA to fly a drone in US airspace. We interviewed Mr. Jim Bonnardel, and we found out we had a lot of problems in our idea. Mr. Bonnardel provided us with some very useful insight, and we assigned a portion of research to every one of our company members. For example, Shivam researched about which countries or states have regulations on drones, Yuvraj researched how blood is processed, and I helped research about different types of drones. I am fairly confident we can make a working MVP before Showcase Event because we have a basic idea for how to build it already. We have tested a drone already, and we have a document on how to put our payload onto our drone. We are planning to get a drone off Amazon for our MVP, so cost is not an issue. Instead, how to get used to flying the drone and putting the payload on to make sure the drone does not wobble is an issue. Our plan for the future is to buy our drone, tinker with it, and finally get a working prototype.
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Team Dynamics - Yuvraj
Our team interactions thus far are going moderately well, we have had our hills and our valleys. Thankfully more hills rather than valleys. Overall I would categorize our team as at best, high energy and friendly, and at worst, not as motivated as we could be. We were very motivated at the beginning, but sadly as the work got tedious members in our team started taking short cuts. To keep people in check I had to do a screen share so I could check as often as I pleased. The screen sharing idea ended in less than two days, but it got the message across, “I don’t wanna micromanage, but I will.” After that moment our team started getting prepped again and things were going smoothly and we had our first professional interviewee, Jim Bonnardel. We continue to work smoothly and I don’t think I'll need to micromanage again, thankfully. In my opinion, a leader that knows everything that is going on around him without micromanaging. This way, you know everything that's going on in the company, no need for someone to fill in. I think leadership is needed because everyone has there different strengths and weaknesses, and many people don't own up to their weaknesses and may take too much workload. I think a good leader can place people where they will work happily and effectively. Conflicts have been managed smoothly and our company has started to gradually change from its original idea, but I think we are doing very well for now. I was able to control my employees and myself with Trello and a deadline. Sometimes people aren’t working effectively, and I think it is because there is awhile till their deadline is due, so when I feel progress isn’t fast enough I just bring the due date closer. I think I would have fired Shivam by now if this was a real situation because when we started he pulled his weight, but recently he hasn’t been helping as much as he could be. Sometimes I have caught him playing games, and recently he has put his laptop on his lap so no one can view it. As the leader of my group, I believe that personalities are very important, for example, someone who works hard would be great, and someone who can think quickly and has a flexible personality would greatly improve a team’s productivity rate. I think having people compete will bring out the best in them in terms of productivity and accuracy, but it may cause them to be unfriendly towards each other. I think doing what I’m currently doing can help people progressing, I think as soon as they realize that it's May, they will start work and progress the team.
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Team Dynamics - Shivam MajiSo far, our team interactions are pretty good, with a few ups and downs. Some adjectives that I would use to describe our team is motivated, friendly, encouraging, and a bit off task. A good leader is approachable, credible, good at making decisions, and positive. A good leader is one that articulates a clear vision, focuses on helping the team, and know the team well. We have established leadership on the team where everyone is more or less equal. Conflicts have been rare so far, and have been mostly managed by talking it out. We have two ways of keeping everyone on task: Trello and Screen Sharing. Trello assigns everyone their jobs and Screen Sharing ensures that they are doing it. There isn’t really anyone to fire as of now. I think the personality of someone is just as important as their skill set. I think having people compete with each other for rewards will make them work harder.
Carpe Diem - Yuvraj DhadwalI feel like we are very close to finishing our project, with the deadline looming around the corner, everyone is struggling to reach our deadline. I do not believe a fully functioning prototype is necessary, but it would be a nice commodity. In an MVP there may be many bugs and mishaps, while in a prototype you should have smothered any issues. A risk we took was to contact the Red Cross, which did pay-off in the end. They did respond, which was very nice of them, though they weren’t able to help us because of their No Solicitors Policy they were able to direct us to a very useful link which taught gave us a vast array of knowledge upon the topic of blood. I believe we took every advantage we could have taken. I have done a sizeable portion of the workload. For example, it is my job to update the slideshow and the website, which you are looking at right now. Though for the slideshow, Owen does assist from time to time, when he can.
Carpe Diem - Owen YuanI feel like we are done with our project since we have an MVP. We don’t really need to actually make a prototype, we only need an MVP to show our idea will actually work and earn money. We were successful as a company, and we took a risk by altering who we were going to help completely. That didn’t work out, and we went back to serving remote hospitals. We also had a chance to build our own drone from scratch, but we decided to buy an MVP instead because we did not have enough time, and we did not have the resources. I contributed with the presentation, I did interviews, and I thought up new ideas. I could have done better by doing a bit more research.
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Team Dynamics - Owen Yuan Our team works together pretty well, except for the fact that Shivam is very unproductive as of right now. Our team is very loud, but Yuvraj and I are productive. Shivam always needs someone to keep an eye on him because it always seems like he is playing games on his laptop. We sometimes need to be a little bit harsh on Shivam to actually get quality products. I think a good leader needs to be very strict, giving punishments when needed. A good leader also has to be able to recognize who is capable of doing what, and I think Yuvraj is a good leader. He knows when to reward us, he also knows when we need to be better and punishes us. The team needed a true leader who ruled with an iron fist and we got what we needed. So far, our conflicts usually are between only two of us, and usually Yuvraj wins because he is the CEO and I back him up. The most effective strategy of keeping everyone on task and making sure Shivam does not play games is to share screens on Google Hangouts Video Call. Shivam is not working effectively because he is a seventh grader, and he does not have the social skills to work properly. We would have fired Shivam twenty times by now if we could fire someone. I think our team needs to stay competitive with each other, or we will just relax and stop working completely. Next week, we should make sure to tell Shivam what to do and help him out.
Carpe Diem - Shivam MajiWe are done with our MVP, which is our box, and we have bought the drone. I think that a live demonstration of our project in front of the judges is a good idea, so it is necessary to have a working prototype by Showcase. One risk we took was changing our idea to help war zones to help remote hospitals. This helped us a lot because we could find much more conclusive research on how our product would be beneficial for remote hospitals. So far, I have helped make interview questions, done research, made the original BMCs, helped work on the slideshows, bought the drone, and other similar tasks. I could have done more work on the slideshows
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