Small Group Dinners

Creating a new habit at Stanford’s Graduate School of BusinessA behavior design project by Colleen Wearn, MBA + MA EducationJune 2015

picnics

Small Group Dinners are a favorite tradition at Stanford GSB (Graduate School of Business)

Student Assembly subsidizes around 100dinners per year

Design Question

Could we use these dinners as a way to help students enjoy nature too?

Goal: Bring a new nature twist to this old favorite tradition

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Behavior = Motivation + Ability + Trigger

Step 1: Start with Motivation

GSB students are already highly motivated to:

1. Enjoy their new setting: sunny California and the beautiful Stanford campus

2. Get to know peers through group dinners (aka networking!)

Learn more about the Fogg Model at www.behaviormodel.org

Boost ability

Step 2: Increase students’ ability to find great picnic spots on campus

Created guide to best picnic places

Added “Stanford’s Best” page to the website we just designed

Shared these tools with GSB students via word of mouth, Facebook posts, and emails to all 800 students

Check it out: naturesecret.squarespace.com

Trigger Design

or Picnic

Looking for a new twist?

Consider an outdoor BBQ or picnic - see great spots on campus here.

Step 3: Add new trigger on the existing Small Group Dinner website

▪ Students who want to host a dinner go to this site to sign up

▪ Already part of the routine

▪ Collaborated with GSB’s Student Assembly (SA); they are excited too SA sent these additions to the GSB webmaster this weekPicnics & hikes featured as a top priority for fall quarter “Next year, SA will…

• Sponsor more diverse activities—hikes, picnics, etc.

Overall strategy: make the behavior easy to do

Make it easy to know about &

find picnic spots on campus

Outdoor Club hosted two small group picnics this spring, modeling

the “how to”

Built from an existing

behavior—Small Group Dinners—and expanded it to

include outdoor meals

Results: 4 Small Group Picnics hosted this spring

Success with Small Group Dinner

website! 4 picnic dinners posted; lottery

invitations sent to all GSB students

One group dined at Stanford’s unique Papua New Guinea

Sculpture garden

Students from across the GSB tried out the

new behavior, volunteering to host

picnics on and off campus.

Picnic at Arastradero Preserve

Picnic at Windy Hill

Small Group Picnics are becoming a new habit at the GSB

We’re building momentum! More than 10% of the Small Group Dinners

this quarter were outside

4 dinners x 10 people x 90 minutes = 3600 outdoor moments created

Website changes are designed to keep up the trend leads to over 10,000 additional nature moments for GSB students each year

Next step: Build from one habit to the next…

Foster tradition of Small Group Hikes too, a slightly harder behavior requiring more time and physical effort

Comments, questions, or ideas?Contact Colleen at cwearn@stanford.edu

Thanks for your interest in this Behavior Design project.