Here’s a nice experiment showing people drawn to do something good, simply because its fun! Check out some of their other experiments on thefuntheory.com.
Anyone know of other examples like this?
4 thoughts on “Piano stairs”
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Sigh. Yet another site using piles of flash with no actual content for people without flash. The ideas sound nice, but I can’t actually read about them.
These are great! The problem with them though is that there is no data about whether the behaviour stays changed after the “novelty period” has worn off. That is, how long does it take for people to say “eh, I played the piano yesterday, escalator it is!”
Of course knowing the novelty effect works makes it really valuable for infrequent tasks.
Good thought.
My thought would be that we know that the (what I’ll call) “whimsical fun” effect may wear off with time or usage, so we limit such a thing to the more infrequent tasks, but we imbue the more frequent tasks with longer term positive associations.
Simply making graphics more esthetically pleasing is one example. But sounds and animations are another way to be conscious about this. There’s a reason many (most?) operating systems have a startup sound. Music affects us (whether we want it to or not). Particular types of music have a particular effect.
Objects bouncing on the screen or shaking or darting; we respond in different ways.
All that to say that it might be interesting to approach the UI with a perpective of looking for frequency (as well as drudgery) and allow that to inform the amount of whimsy or the type of emotional response we desire.
If a particular feature is powerful and would benefit most users, but infrequently used, perhaps if we added an element of whimsy to it, then more users would take advantage of it (and share it with others in its coolness).
What was so bad about the escalator ? And what is the bid deal about taking the stairs, I do admit it looks like a really fun set of steps but whats the deal ?