2. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
3. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
4. What is Vision Boarding?
Why: So you can focus on your life goals and achieve
them
What: A cork board on which you put pictures of your
goals that you cut out from magazines or print out from
the internet. Look at it daily.
Who: Visualization and Vision Boarding are used by some
of the most successful individuals and prominent people in
the world, such as:
Oprah, Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Anthony Robbins, Jack Canfield, Will Smith, Jim Carey, and
many many more
5. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
6. Why college students?
Stepping back from the hustle and bustle of daily student
life and figuring out what your main life goals are and
where you are going in life is difficult!
As a Residential Assistant (Staff for a freshmen dorm) at
Stanford, I saw that many, many students wanted help
and guidance figuring out the direction for their college
experience and life in general.
I hypothesized that this technique of Vision Boarding
would help students figure out their inner goals and also
help keep these goals in focus (ie. hopefully helping them
to achieve the goals) during their college experience.
7. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
8. Experiments
I decided to run a series of experiments to see if vision
boarding would help students conceive of and achieve
their goals
The first challenge was to get students super excited
about revolutionizing their life and also for this method of
doing that
9. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
10. Inspiring Students
I realized that most students would be skeptical of the
Vision Board process and that I would need to inspire
confidence in them that it would work
The first step in the experiments was to get them on board
and excited about
1. Figuring out and achieving their goals
2. Using Vision Boarding as a method to do this
11. Inspiring Students: 1st Attempt
Goal: Get students pumped & inspired
Created a web page describing Vision Voards and
included instructions on how to make one
Asked students to email me once they created them (or if
they had any questions)
Sent it out to a dorm mailing list ~70 people
14. Lessons
Need to give more inspiration and motivation for students
to get excited about it
Personally teach them how to create vision boards rather
than expecting them to do it on their own
Make it very clear that they can email me even if they
have not yet created a Vision Board for themselves
Make it easier to contact me (so they don’t have to open /
type out an email!), decrease effort and awkwardness
15. Inspiring Students: 2nd Attempt
Goal: Get students to be excited and sign up for a
workshop where I can explain andteach them in person
Made the offer a workshop
Changed the email me link into a simple “submit your
email” field in a form
Slightly changed concept (Visualization)
Instead of asking the students to do (create the vision
board) this all by themselves I decided to walk them
through it in person – thinking that the first step I should
focus on is just getting them excited about the concept
17. Results
29 page views
6 sign ups!
General interest and excitement (also showed other
people the page in person)
Note: This was sent to a couple dorms (vs the 1st Attempt
sent to only 1 dorm) (widened audience)
18. Lessons
Corroborated by in person explanations to people about
the concept – dropping the big names up front REALLY
helps get people excited and make people believe.
Also from talking to people, I found out that the Jim Carrey
example is really good to use as it paints a concrete
picture of someone successful using the technique and
succeeding!
Keep it short!
Lower the barrier to action!
19. Insights From Both
Experiments
Focus on solving the first part of the problem – getting
people motivated – rather than solving the whole thing
Use a Hot Trigger – something they can do right now (ie.
sign up for the workshop) rather than something that takes
more time (ie. design and build a vision board)
Motivate people by showing them examples of success
and successful people
Keep it short!
20. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
21. Creating Boards
The next major step in the Vision Board process is actually sitting
down and creating the Board
This can be difficult in terms of resources (ie. you have to buy a
cork board and magazines to cut pictures out of or have a printer to
print pictures out with)
I found that this had stopped me from making vision boards
multiple times in the past (took a lot to overcome this ability barrier)
To make it simpler (and what I thought would be more ubiquitous –
more on this later) I decided to help people build digital vision
boards on their computer and set them as their desktop
background
I figured that this would also be easier to do – everyone would just
have to have their laptop (easy) and also planned to print the
completed boards
22. Creating Boards
The experiment:
Bring 5 people into a room
Explain the process
Tell them to choose 3 (to keep it easy and simple) images
which represent their goals
Sit down together and create our vision boards (myself
included)
Share them
28. Results
I had thought that getting the images would be difficult
Surprisingly everyone unanimously said choosing the images
was very fun, easy, and quick
Quotes
“Made me happy”
“Really enjoyed it”
“Was fun!”
Harder (not that hard) part was piecing the picture together.
Found a site that let us do it really easily (pixlr.com)
Within 40 minutes pretty much everyone was done. Jason
finished his in 5-10 minutes (he had to leave).
29. Insights
I had thought that this was going to be the most difficult
part of the process – turned out to be the easiest and by
far the most fun for everyone!
Doing it in a digital fashion (on our computers) made it
very easy to find lots of images; finding the high quality
ones was the challenging part of vision board creation
30. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
31. Using Boards: 1 Week
I asked everyone to set their vision board as their desktop
background for 1 week
Jason, David, and I did this.
Chris loved his desktop background and didn’t want to change it
so he made a simple webpage with just the vision board and set
it as the startup page for his internet browser on both his
personal and lab computers. (Note he saw the image when he
first opened the browser, not every time he opened a new tab)
I also initially set the vision board as my new tab (through an
extension) background for my browser, though I ended up taking
this off because people would see my vision board when they
walked by my computer (or if they were working with me)
32. Results
Chris – Very personally impacted by the process
Thoroughly enjoyed making the board (finding the images)
Community was the biggest picture on his vision board (most important)
and thus he felt that the process of creating and sharing vision boards
with friends was memorable and awesome
Before lab work in the morning that Tuesday (when he would normally
be tired and browse his email), Chris drew out images of life in the
future and how he wanted his experience to be
Changed his life outlook from “whatever happens, I’m okay with” to
“deciding what I want”
Jason - Saw board ~10 times per work day. Seeing the images
made him think about doing the exercise.
David – Saw his vision board ~3 times in the week (usually had his
desktop covered with his applications). Said it made him want to
get pictures of the cave on his board blown up for his room as a
poster.
33. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
35. Results
Found out how to engage and excite students about vision
boards
Successfully walked 4 people through the creation and
usage of vision boards for 1 week
Had varying degrees of personal impact, from awareness
of goals -> revelations
36. Game Plan
What is Vision Boarding?
Why should college students use them?
Experiments
Inspiring Students
Creating Boards
Using Boards
Results
Insights
37. Insights
Contrary to my original belief, creating vision boards on
the computer is very fun, enjoyable, and easy.
Desktop background is NOT a good place to see your
vision board often. Desktop usually hidden by maximized
applications, icons, etc…
In order to get Stanford students excited about vision
boards, use concrete examples of stories of success.
Doing the vision board and goals creation process with
friends can be a powerful bonding experience.
38. Next Steps
Test with more people to verify insights
Create paper versions of the digital vision boards (print
them out after you have created them) and see if you can
make it much more accessible by putting it in front of your
desk
Test alternate ways to remind students about their dreams
and goals they have put on their vision board (especially
digitally)
Measure people’s long-term change
39. Now It’s Your Turn
Go think about your dreams and create your own vision board!
40. Acknowledgements
BIG thank you to BJ Fogg (@bjfogg) for his advice and
guidance in sharing his wisdom about behavior design!
Chris, Jason, David, and Aditya for being the experiments
of my study
Alborz, Sarah, Grace and Tiffany for forwarding emails to
their dorms