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Teams Fretz Can’t Forget (for various reasons)

UMICH POOPS

This team was hilarious. They decided to catalog all of the best restrooms on campus in terms of their size, comfort, and privacy. Then they created a searchable database and publicized it widely.

APIDA Magazine

I enjoyed working with this team initially, years ago, to create a magazine dedicated to the APIDA community. When they didn’t have enough money to make print copies, I gave them the money to do their first run. Imagine my delight when many years later, at a student group fair, I came across the exact same magazine and a group of students who had no memory of the start of their club but were still running this wonderful magazine and printing it every year.

Cricket Bat

This group impressed me because it was the classic expertise question where one of the group members played cricket but also had knowledge of different types of wood and he realized that there was a type of wood that could be in between the cheap bat and the super expensive bat and would give better play characteristics. So he made some bats out of the new wood and actually got them into practices with the best cricket teams in the United States. And they got favorable reviews. I’m pretty sure they didn’t pursue it after class, but I would have loved to see them do that.

Study Space Hack

This group of ethical hackers found a way to assess how busy the different study spots on campus were by gently hacking the unsecured side of the wireless routers. By sampling how loaded the routers were and how many people were in the room, they could get an equivalency table and then remotely assess how busy each area was, and then they could publish that information to students looking for spots to study. Once they proved their concept, I insisted that they speak directly to the library and get permission, which they did, and this ran successfully for several terms.

50 State Suds

This group had a fun idea to make soap and have it be in the shape of the different states. So they started with Michigan, and they also made a Doctor Fretz soap.  They were another great classic Etsy style entrepreneurial play, and they learned a lot of lessons making soap and ensuring that it was shelf stable and that the packaging worked. They learned a lot of lessons and made at least a little money, and I believe they stayed together for a term or so after the class, but eventually decided to do other things.

Sober Vault

This group had a fun technical idea of making the equivalent of a drunk driver interlock but for a gun safe. They built a working prototype. I was always amazed at how much the students could get done in 90 days.

CIVIL

This special newsletter was one of my favorite projects because I feel strongly about the danger of having people live in biased stove pipes of information. They did a great job creating balanced discussions around hot political topics. They had a pretty good response, but I don’t believe they continued very long after the term. A number of other sites tried to do the same thing, but I really loved their approach.

ONS

Overnight supplies was a really clever idea that was extremely well executed. They made a handy pouch that had a variety of things that would be useful if you woke up not in your own bed – if you know what I mean. Their packaging and marketing was top notch and I was always amazed at how it was basically a commercial product in only 90 days.

Diag Art

This group was one of my favorite stories because they had this ambitious plan to have multiple artists chalk art across the entire diag. It was sad because on the night when they did all the work, a rain storm came through and really messed it up, but they still got an A.

Txt2Donate

This group was another one that became famous because they tried so hard to find a way to help homeless people get donations. They tried a variety of different techniques but came up against difficulties since dedicated credit cards already exist and many businesses didn’t want to deal with the special system, and the local homeless center did a great job educating them on what the population actually needed and where they were from. In the end, they tried to use a special system with text codes and they actually had to go out on the street and test it, and even that failed because it seemed a little too polished and people didn’t trust it. So this group failed everything they tried, but they delivered one of the most interesting and impactful presentations the course has ever seen, and they got an A.

Pee coat, pee targets

There were a number of different projects involving urination. One of them was a project for student athletes, particularly football players who didn’t want to have to leave the field in order to take care of business. So combining a full length trench coat with standard backpacking bathroom bags was an interesting solution. And a number of groups over the years invented different targets or gadgets to encourage men to use the urinal more effectively. The one with the spinning target was certainly interesting, and I had fun demonstrating it with a super soaker, but I have my concerns about the mess with this one.

Medi-Grip

This was a clever group done by a student that I mentored extensively. She worked as an ER tech and her idea was a good one in that they had an expensive adhesive that they used in emergencies. It only came in large bottles and it was often tremendously wasteful. So her idea was to repackage it in a handy dispenser that could be used with just one hand. They did a number of tests and while it never made it to being tested on actual patients, the test activities they did showed it was extremely effective. This was the most highly rated project of the term that year.

Solo Cup Ads

This was one of my favorite sad story teams where they learned a lesson about business and not having unique intellectual property. Their idea was to silk screen ads onto Solo cups that were bought in bulk. By having advertisers pay to get their message on the cups, they could sell those cups to the campus bulk users, like fraternities, at low cost and they would take a slice in the middle. This went pretty well through the preparation phases, but once the silk screen company got into it, they suddenly stopped answering their emails. I explained to the puzzled students that they were not necessary to the process and that anyone can order bulk solo cups. So basically, their business partner had decided to do everything on their own and cut them out. Just one of the many lessons you learn as an entrepreneur.

Ross Coffee Anger

This was another good Lesson Learned team where a very passionate team leader wanted to leverage the Starbucks policy of letting you use reusable cups. However, their passion for the issue led them to be a little too ideologically strident, and the managers of the Starbucks became unhappy with how they were doing their project. Yet another example of how emotional intelligence and careful management of project partners is important.

Oatmeal Adventures!

This was one of the fastest starting teams I ever had, led by a young woman who had extremely high emotional intelligence and was able to convince a local business to let her run her oatmeal breakfast pop up on their property using their kitchen and licenses. That’s not an easy thing to do. As a result, she was making profit before the end of the first month and made several thousand dollars before the end of the term. This team was also a cautionary tale about getting too businessy too fast. The team had insisted on forming an LLC and setting up bank accounts, and the founder went along with it, signing whatever they put in front of her. She was then confused at the end of the term when all of her teammates expected to be literally bought out of the corporation. There were some awkward discussions. 

Twin Finder

This is an example of an idea that was proposed by some students, but their parents wouldn’t let them do it; so it went to what I call the Island of Misfit Ideas. I occasionally share these ideas with later teams who don’t seem to have a good idea of their own, to see if maybe they want to carry what I consider to be a worthy idea to possible success. In this case, the idea was to create a website where people could upload a couple pictures of themselves, including their driver’s license photo, for the hope of having a chance to find their twin. A database function would match off of demographics like hair color and eye color, and then you would scroll through the photos to find someone who looked a lot like you. If you did, for a fee, you could arrange to meet. The tongue in cheek idea here is that you would divide the pools of photos to those who were over 21 and under 21, if you see where I’m going. Then if you could convince your twin to accidentally leave their license behind, you would have a perfect fake ID. This idea was right on the edge, but I thought it would be interesting to try to implement, and the second group that tried it did actually field a prototype. But it turned out that the idea fails because people are afraid to upload their driver’s license photo even when it’s only the picture, because they have an irrational fear of identity theft. So in the end, an idea I thought was clever died anyway.

Little Wrestlers

This group was one of the last projects ever done for the class. The group itself was in danger of failing 2 weeks before the end of the semester and they had a tough conversation with “Commander Fretz.” This is always an uncomfortable process, but they really took it to heart and got crazy busy and in the end they had a huge wrestling match in the parking lot behind their house and it was the best attended event of the evening. Getting viral traction and basically becoming overwhelmed, they did not expect the response they got, so they couldn’t actually control the crowd or charge all the tickets, but they could have made thousands of dollars. I went there to watch and make sure everything was OK and I loved when multiple students from previous terms came up to me and said, Dr. Fretz, is this something from your class? And I said “yes,” and they said “I knew it!”

Trash Roomba

This project was another one of those fast starts where, by the end of the first month, they brought a working prototype to my house and drove my trash can around in my driveway. The student team was led by a master robotics fabricator, and clearly he had a plan. There were still some issues with having it autonomously navigate random people’s driveways to take your trash out to the curb, but it was a great idea and awesome execution.

Parallel Plates

This group had the idea of making lighter weights that looked to be the same size as the big heavy metal plates. They were made out of a different material but looked the same size, and initially I thought this was sort of a quirky idea, but their surveys showed there was an overwhelming desire for people to not have the awkwardness or judgment of lifting smaller amounts. It was overwhelmingly endorsed by potential customers and they made some very interesting prototypes.

Umbrella Rental System

The umbrella rental system was proposed by numerous students, but only implemented twice. The best version of it provided very obvious bright orange umbrellas, and relied on an honor system. It actually worked for a while; but eventually, there was attrition as people kept the umbrellas. To really work this would have to be something where you put a deposit down with your M card and if you kept the umbrella you got charged for the full price. But this was always a good example of students figuring out a way to meet a campus need.

Kamchatka Shot Cap

This group created an interesting 3D printed cap that would go onto a liquor bottle and would help you pour out exactly one shot. I always remembered them because they asked if they could demonstrate it in class and I told them they could, but that the bottle had to be filled with water, not vodka. It was still a very memorable presentation.

Secret Greek Gossip x2

There were two groups over the years that leveraged the Greek system and the gossip that occurs within it. One of them had created a sort of e-mail gossip sheet that went around and spilled the tea. It got to be very popular and very controversial, and this group had to present to me in a private room because they were afraid people would find out they were behind it. I believe they kept it going for another term after the class, but then it faded out. The other group wanted to analyze and potentially tinker with a very old and sketchy online gossip site. No one knew where it came from or who owned it, but people from multiple universities in Greek systems spread gossip using this online site. At first, they set out to just test the system and see what sort of reactions they could produce, almost like a science experiment. Then, once they noticed certain things getting traction, they sort of went all in. From what I recall, I owe D-Sig an apology for the whole raccoon story!

Central America, 4 Fail Team

This was another cautionary team where they worked for 2 1/2 months to collaborate with some missionaries in Central America to set up a pipeline of fair trade crafts that they could sell. Suddenly there was no more communication and they were stuck with the dead project. They tried two more ideas, both of which failed, and ended up presenting on their 4th idea, which they had only worked on for about 3 weeks. But they had a fantastic final presentation that detailed all of their mistakes and all of the efforts they made and it was very well done and they got an A in the class. I used them as an example in every subsequent class so that people understood that glorious failure still gets you an A.

The Weight Cart that Got Denied

This group, or rather the leader of the group, always sticks in my memory because she was so intensely passionate about her idea, almost to the point of being beyond reason. She had clearly pummeled everyone else in the group into submission to put her idea first. But when I didn’t like it, she got very quiet and frowny. Just to be clear, her idea was to have an automatic checkout system based on weight only. That would require enormous investments in infrastructure and no clarity about buying things like, say, watch batteries. And this was in addition to the fact that, at the time, billion dollar corporations were already fielding much better systems with RFID and other advanced technologies. The idea was truly dead in the water, but she wouldn’t see it. I approved a different idea for this team and they told me the next week that she had dropped the class. The interesting follow up is that she was in my LinkedIn network, so I would see her at graduation and like clockwork, about every 18 months thereafter. Constantly being “open to work.”  Basically, she never lasted anywhere she went, and I’m pretty sure I know why. Hopefully over time, she sorts it out.