The Elysian Stairs to Health

You often hear that it is better to take the stairs instead of the escalator. However, in practice it is convenient to forget this bit of good advice and take the escalator anyway. To combat this, Volkswagen’s viral campaign “The Fun Theory” (a database of videos that is now the staple of many gamification workshops) piloted a campaign called the Piano Staircase in Sweden.

For the Piano Staircase, engineers integrated movement-tracking hardware to detect activity on the staircase, which subsequently plays a piano note whenever a specific step is triggered. The staircase is also decorated as piano patterns to show which note is being played and to elicit the commuters’ curiosity (Discovery Phase design is very important).

As people walked up and down the stairs, they started to hear notes playing. Soon, many commuters who heard others go up the stairs started taking the stairs too themselves to see if it...