Back when I, !Xobile, visited the big city of Stockholm, I was surprised and delighted to hear the sound of music beneath my feet. No, I was not stepping on musicians as I walked down the street, I was simply walking down the stairs at the subway station.
How is this possible, you may be wondering? Well, the village shaman told me there was no way of this happening, so I had to investigate further, and this is what I found.
The Musical Stairs
It seems the good people at "The Fun Theory" decided to test the theory that more people would take the stairs if it was simply fun to do. How do you make something fun then? Well, I believe that to make something fun, you have to make it appealing to one or more of the senses. In this case, they utilized music and stairs to tap into our need for physical and auditory stimulation. In other words, when movement and music is combined, good things happen. Look at the other fun thing that people from all over the world (okay, mostly Asia) enjoy, Dance Dance Revolution (ooooo DDR!). To make these stairs musical, workers placed sensors and speakers on each step of the flight of stairs. Then, a covering of either white or black tiles were placed over the steps. After calibrating each step to play a corresponding note, presto, you have musical stairs!
At the end of the day, 66% more people than normal chose to use the stairs rather than the adjacent escalator.
Musical Stairs: decreasing obesity, one note/step at a time.
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