Who are we designing for?
Target User Group: We are targeting busy Stanford students who have many commitments — academic, extracurricular, and social. In particular, we are looking for students who often forget to follow up or confirm plans, cancel or change plans, and/or fail to show up for plans they have committed to.
Relevance to study goals: We are interested in helping people become better at following through on commitments, so in our baseline study we are targeting participants who struggle with this to some degree. This will enable us to learn more about why our users struggle with commitments and how we can design an intervention. Additionally, since some of our participants will be converted to intervention participants, we want to ensure that our baseline participants have room for growth in our targeted behavior.
Participant Selection
Screener: Google Form
Our screener survey is designed to both filter appropriate participants and gather basic information about their scheduling habits. We ask prospective participants to verify that they are Stanford students (undergraduate or graduate), and we then ask about the frequency with which they schedule and cancel plans.
Prospective participants who have not canceled or rescheduled at least one plan in the last two weeks are screened out. Additionally, participants who initiate plans or accept invitations with friends, classmates, or groups infrequently (less than once a week) are screened out due to the 5 day diary study window. We additionally ask prospective participants how long they take to respond to invitations and what system they used to keep track of commitments for further background information.
Diary Study
Logistical Data:
- Number of social and extracurricular plans made per day
- Whether plans were kept, revised, or canceled
- Timing of commitment
- How long did it take to accept the invitation?
- Timing of cancellation(s)
- How close to the event was the cancellation made?
- How far after the initial acceptance of the invitation was the cancellation made?
- Communication method(s) used to confirm and cancel commitments
Content Data:
- Emotions surrounding decision for whether or not to commit to an event
- Factors influencing commitment level
Background:
- Did you make any plans or commitments today?
- If yes, how many?
- What type(s) of commitments?
- Did any plan that you made today, or any upcoming plans, feel at risk of falling through?
- If yes, how many?
- When did you start feeling uncertain about the plan?
- What contributed most to that uncertainty?
Canceled Plan:
- Did any plans you previously made fall through or get rescheduled today?
- If yes, how many?
- What was your role in the cancellation or adjustment?
- How long before the plan did the cancellation or adjustment occur?
- What was the main reason that the plan did not happen as expected?
- How did you or other involved parties communicate the change in plans?
Reflection:
- How did you feel about how today’s plans panned out?
- (Optional) If you had to summarize your experience with planning social and extracurricular commitments today, what would you say?
Day 5 Only (Further Reflection):
- Over the past 5 days, did you notice any patterns in the kinds of plans that were more likely to change or not happen?
- What usually helped you move from feeling unsure about a plan to deciding what to do?
- Did keeping this diary change how you thought about making or changing plans? If so, in what ways?
Data Collection Plan
We will ask participants to submit diary entries daily to enable our team to do incremental review. We will collect data via a spreadsheet, with a mix of short answer (times, numbers, binary questions) and long answer questions. Our format is primarily text, but we encourage participants to optionally submit relevant artifacts (e.g. screenshots of text conversations).
We will send out participant reminders daily in the morning and check-in with participants in the evening to ensure that they are on track to submit their diary entry that day.
We will collect entries in a sheet formatted like the one here. Each participant will receive a link to an individual sheet. Data submission will be automatic, since the participant’s google sheet will be shared with the team.
Study Materials
Tyler Abernethy, Vardhan Agrawal, Katherine Sullivan, Sunny Yu. January 15, 2026. Screener and Baseline Study Outline.
