For those of you that feel that learning is a serious activity, and as such, is no place for fun…A simple experiment in group behavior was designed. The research question was:

Can we get more people to choose the stairs by making it fun to do?

The following 2-minute video shows what the team did to create “fun” stairs.

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Did it work? If you watched the time-lapsed video you saw the change. By making the stairs fun, 66% more people used the stairs instead of the escalator. What I found the most interesting is what was missing. Did you catch it? There were no signs, no banners, no messages of any kind. The only clues were the visual of the stairs looking like a piano and the sound.

Simply by creating a little fun with stairs they changed behavior. No meetings, no informational campaign–no advance messaging of any kind.

My challenge to you is this…put a little fun in your learning. See if you can make change fun instead of frightening. The results may surprise you.