Online exploration of McDonald's

In this document, based off 2014, McDonald's highlights how many franchises or stores that they have in each country world wide. Especially in the U.S., we have over 14, 339 stores here alone, out of the 14, 350 stores that their are in the U.S., Cuba, Guam, and Saipan. Asia, the middle east and Africa are also doing quite well with 10, 345 stores in 2014. Europe might be considered to be lagging, although it still has a positive rise in stores since 2009. Europe is also down about 3% in performance.

3-2-1 TED talk

One of the examples that he used was that little sticker on apples. How when you first started taking the stickers off, they were annoying and a hassle. But after the 10th apple, you were just like "eh" it's something i have to do. And after the 100th time you don't even notice this. He said that this is Habituation, which basically means you get used to having to do something over time, without really having to think about it. Another example he gave was in the 90s, when whenever you got a new gadget or anything, that you always had to charge the product before you could use it. As a product designer, he said, i have to be able to think like the consumer, to get rid of that problem. The last example that i'll talk about, is when Jerry Seinfeld built his entire career around those little details that you miss when you habituate something. he gave the example of when he wanted to take a relaxing shower, but when he turned the nozzle one way it was 100 degrees too hot, and when he turned it the opposite direction it was 100 degrees too cold. It's those little problems that we've gotten used to because we think it's just the way that the world works.

Especially with my grandparents, they don't understand technology as well as i might. So when they want to get in touch with me, they might find it difficult to call or text me, so much so that they have to ask for help with it. Another example is athletic headphones that don't stay attached to your ears.

One product that was planned expertly well that i loved is imessage. It offers everything any texter like me could want, easy access, quick response, even delivered and read receipts on the bottom of the screen.

Enron was at one point one of the most powerful companies financially, or so it appeared. Enron used Mark-To-Market accounting, which is used in trading securities. Enron would create an asset and immediately report a profit even though they hadn't made a dime. If the asset ended up in loss, they would transfer it to an off the books corporation and not take any loss in the books. One main reason that they were able to pull off this trickery for so long is because Jeffery Skillings was able to lure top business school graduates with benefits and luxuries. One of the brightest grads that Skillings got was Andrew Fastow, who used Special Purpose Entities to hide any asset losses or assets that go under. This method kept the losses off the companies books. Enron issued that the SPE investors would compensate them for their losses.


http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/09/enron-collapse.asp