Volkswagen sponsored a great way to get folks to use the stairs using a fun approach. Check it out on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SByymar3bds
It's an interesting social experiment on changing behavior using fun interactive feedback. As Business Analysts and Designers, are we putting the "Fun" into our designs to make them easier to use and more utilized?
After watching the YouTube video I realized technology isn't know for fun. If you are a video game team than you probably are the most fun technology gets. I got a little nostalgic. Back at the very beginning of my career in the dark ages of key punch cards and a mainframe the size of a semi-tractor trailer, we in IT didn't have a lot of choices when it cam to user interfaces. At the time the interface was a glorified typewriter and green bar paper. Not exactly user friendly. I'm not even sure if the term "User Friendly" even existed.
Then the great invention of the green screen terminal appeared and no longer was it needed to print everything on paper. It was the start of the great "Green Screen" era. A display that was all text, two colors and beyond cryptic. Yes you really did did to read that manual carefully. It was the dawn of IT interface legacy.
After that came Windows, Linux, Mac and lots of pretty multicolor explosions of visual wonder. And I still can't find the "Cancel" button. The more technology marches on with change, the more it stays the same.
If it's possible to make something as simple and universal as stairs more fun - let's make our user interfaces more fun too. Grab your user interface guru and so on a journey of making system more exciting to use, simplify and dare I say it actually fun to use. The world just might use that application of yours a whole lot more.