It’s tough to get people to make healthier decisions about the way they live their lives. Public health officials have tried for decades to stem the obesity epidemic by getting people to exercise more, but all their tactics–lecturing, scolding, scaring, informing, inspiring, empowering–have had very little effect.
But at a subway station in Stockholm, a band of inventive social engineers had amazing results when they decided to get commuters off the escalators and onto the stairs. They asked themselves, “Can we get more people to choose the stairs by making it fun to do?” And then they turned the staircase into a piano keyboard, complete with black and white keys.
The project was part of a larger initiative sponsored by Volkswagen called “The Fun Theory,” which aims to prove that people will change their behavior for the better if you let them have a little fun in the bargain. Have you pulled off a similar trick? Tell Volkswagen about it and you can win more than $4,000.
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Video: Volkswagen
November 5th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Yep – great vid, saw this a while back. great idea.
On another note (no pun intended) why does the advert for ‘The Darwin Era” on your site also state “150 years of evolution”. Surely this is wrong on two counts – first evolution has been around for ever, and secondly Darwin didn’t ‘discover’ evolution. Hmmm.
November 5th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I tricked my colleagues into digging my ditch for me because I pretended I found a gold deblune in the area I was digging. It was just a deblune from home though, but they thought there were gonna be more!
I got everybody at school to eat all their vegetables because I led them to believe it would make them more virile. I also had to explain what virile meant.
November 5th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I dare anyone to say Fahrvergnügen or Rolighetsteorin five times (pronounced correctly!) real fast. No fair if you’re Swedish!