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The Obvious
Jan. 9th, 2020 10:33 amAfter rising before the sun and spending the next hour outside in sub-zero temperatures shovelling snow, I am left wondering again why I was so eager to own my own place.
If I lived in a condo or an apartment, the hired help could take care of that stuff and I could sleep in.
Anyway...
Somebody left a comment on my latest pony story, pointing out that Rainbow Dash's motivates were pretty obvious early on, so the twist at the end didn't come as much of a surprise.
This is true, because it was intentional. I purposely made her feelings obvious to everyone but Twilight Sparkle. The conflict in the story was Twilight Sparkle versus her own obliviousness. She was so focused on trying to find the right answer to her friend's problem that she was missing the obvious answer.
Though I got very little from the Business Analysis courses my employer put me through a few years ago, one thing that stuck with me was an assignment that our instructor handed the class one day.
He described a problem at an airport, where passengers were disgruntled at how long it was taking for their bags to arrive at the baggage carousel after their flight arrived. We were tasked with breaking off into groups to come up with solutions.
Later, we discussed all of the proposed solutions with the class and graded them on how much they would cost, how much feasible they were, and if they even fell within the power of the airport to implement; i.e., changing the way that bags are tagged isn't something that can just be done unilaterally. At the end of it, the instructor told us what the airport actually did.
They added roadblocks between the arrival gates and the baggage carousels so that it took longer for passengers to get there. Customer satisfaction ratings immediately went up because people don't mind getting from point A to point B, but they hate standing around and waiting. They reduced the wait times by increasing the travel times.
It was such an elegant and simple solution that it hadn't occurred to any of us.
If I lived in a condo or an apartment, the hired help could take care of that stuff and I could sleep in.
Anyway...
Somebody left a comment on my latest pony story, pointing out that Rainbow Dash's motivates were pretty obvious early on, so the twist at the end didn't come as much of a surprise.
This is true, because it was intentional. I purposely made her feelings obvious to everyone but Twilight Sparkle. The conflict in the story was Twilight Sparkle versus her own obliviousness. She was so focused on trying to find the right answer to her friend's problem that she was missing the obvious answer.
Though I got very little from the Business Analysis courses my employer put me through a few years ago, one thing that stuck with me was an assignment that our instructor handed the class one day.
He described a problem at an airport, where passengers were disgruntled at how long it was taking for their bags to arrive at the baggage carousel after their flight arrived. We were tasked with breaking off into groups to come up with solutions.
Later, we discussed all of the proposed solutions with the class and graded them on how much they would cost, how much feasible they were, and if they even fell within the power of the airport to implement; i.e., changing the way that bags are tagged isn't something that can just be done unilaterally. At the end of it, the instructor told us what the airport actually did.
They added roadblocks between the arrival gates and the baggage carousels so that it took longer for passengers to get there. Customer satisfaction ratings immediately went up because people don't mind getting from point A to point B, but they hate standing around and waiting. They reduced the wait times by increasing the travel times.
It was such an elegant and simple solution that it hadn't occurred to any of us.
