Changing Natural Behaviour By Making It Fun

Spring is almost here in Vancouver. Looking out of my office window, I notice that there are already flower buds sprouting on the leafless tree branches. It’s slightly drizzling and cloudy out, but I don’t see much pedestrians walking with their umbrella in hand. The weather is relatively mild, or even considered really warm to those who’s been living in Vancouver for many years.

Human responses to the environment autonomously: if it is cold and raining harder and more windy, more people would carry an umbrella with them. Or walk in covered area. Or pick the shortest route to reach the destination. Living organisms pick the easiest path to reach their goal, that is understood as a law of survival.

Tree is also an amazing living organism too. Every aspect you see from a tree is related to survival: the radial distribution, optimal accenting angel, distance between each split, strength/flexibility of every part of the tree, how to grow around obstacles and shades, how to fight externally and internally against bugs, physical hazards, weather and other competing plants. There are millions of things happening in that one tree that no human designer can ever engineer them in perfect harmony.

I saw this notice one day when I took my afternoon break walking around my office building, near Marine Drive Residence, UBC. The notice is trying to beg people not cut corner and walk on the lawn, which eventually created a diagonal bald path on the rectangular green field.

I can’t help but wonder, how effective can this notice be? Despite of it’s small page size and unattractive layout, how can you convince people to change their natural behaviour with just a passive notice. So how about we take a different approach, and try to exploit human behaviour instead? Make it FUN.

Some great examples – Urinal Fly makes aiming fun:

Photo by PSD. Visit Urinal Fly: http://www.urinalfly.com

(2) Piano Stairs make walking the stairs fun:

Link: The Fun Theory: http://www.thefuntheory.com