4A - Forming an Opportunity Belief

4A - Forming an Opportunity Belief: A Twist on Opportunity Identification

1. Everyone goes to advising at least once, but usually many more times, during their college career. Usually students go during drop/add week to fix their schedules or ask any questions they have, but with so many people trying to go at the same time they end up waiting hours for a 5 minute meeting.

2. Students need to have access to advising without having to wait multiple hours. This has been a problem for me since I started at UF. They will have more advisors working during these specific times throughout the year, but I still feel that it needs to be expanded even more. Some things are very time sensitive, like being able to choose certain classes before they fill up, and the wait times for advising can negatively impact some students. I am 100% sure this opportunity exists.

Iteration No. 1:

The first prototypical customer I interviewed was my roommate Brittany. She is a Health Science major and takes classes that are in very high demand. These classes can fill up very quickly and if she isn't sure about what she needs to take and needs to see an advisor she says that she needs to do it the semester before because she can't risk waiting for advising once her registration is open. On multiple occasions she said she wasn't able to get the class she wanted because she wasn't able to get into advising before they filled up. She agrees that increasing the number of advisors would be a good solution to this.

Iteration No 2:

The next prototypical customer I interviewed was my friend Sam. His experience with advising is actually very different from mine and Brittany's. His major is Construction Management and because there's so few people pursuing that degree he doesn't have a problem with waiting for advising. This is because there is an appropriate student to advisor ratio unlike the ratio for Business students and Health Science students.

Iteration No 3:

The final prototypical customer I interviewed was my sister. She is actually a student at USF, but I wanted to see if students at other schools have similar experiences with advising. She said that she also has to wait a long time to see an advisor during high volume times. However, when she went to Pasco Hernando State College she didn't run into this problem as much. My sister said that something that USF does is when they sign up for advising they can access the number of people who are in front of them. This gives them the opportunity to go get stuff done and not have to worry about missing their spot in line.

Reflection:

I learned that the majority of people experience this opportunity, but not everyone. Different people also experience it differently. I really loved the idea of being able to see what number you are in line. This gives you the ability to go and get stuff done during your wait time. Whenever I go to advising at the Business college I have no idea when I'm up next and have to sit there for a couple hours waiting because I'm too scared to leave and miss my turn.

Summarize:

Generally, I think the opportunity is still there. It's just more apparent in certain places. Colleges and Universities that have a lot of students and not enough advisors are where you see longer wait times. I think entrepreneurs should adapt their opportunities based on customer feedback situationally. In this case I think a good compromise would be giving students access to what number they are in line if maybe they aren't able to hire enough advisors for these high volume times.