Newsletter - Piano Showcase, Inc.

Musical Piano Stairs Motivate Walkers
Updated: Friday, 09 Oct 2009, 11:20 AM EDT
Published : Friday, 09 Oct 2009, 11:19 AM EDT

By FRANK CARNEVALE

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - As part of its new campaign "The Fun Theory," Volkswagen in Sweden transformed a staircase at a subway station into a giant piano. The aim was to get more people to use the stairs and have fun. And it seems to have worked. (Watch the clip below)

A team installed pressure sensors on a flight of stairs at the Odenplan subway in Stockholm, Sweden. They then covered the stairs in black and white. The sensors were connected to speakers that played musical notes as people stepped on each stair or key.

The company claims that use of the stairs rose 66 percent after they were converted into musical steps.

" The Fun Theory " projects try to make common practices more fun. Another project, "the world's deepest dustbin," rigged a trash receptacle in a park with speakers that played a sound that mimicked an object falling hundreds of feet followed by an impact (think Wile E. Coyote falling of a cliff).

"Fun can obviously change behavior for the better," a company spokesman said to The Daily Mail .

Not everyone thinks it's a great idea, TechCrunch wrote that a flat keyboard people could play is one thing, but a keyboard on a staircase is "really an invitation for people to fall on their faces. Want to play a chord? Try not to die." The post also complained that if there are too many people on the staircase, the keyboard sound could be "the most hideous cacophony."

In January 2007 Special K cereals covered a staircases in Penn Station in New York City and Harvard Station near Boston , with a huge advertisement for a new campaign. The staircases were plastered in red with a giant image of cereal.

The CDC has promoted the use of stairwells as a way to better well being. The agency's " StairWELL to Better Health " program actually upgraded the appearance of a stairwell, added music and attempted to make stairwells more appealing to users and encourage them to seek out the stairs as a quick way to add exercise to their day.