The video clip above is “piano stairs” which is a super fun design with raging success. This design successfully increased the percentage of people taking stairs instead of elevator by an astonishing 66%! Frankly speaking I hope San Francisco or my company can have a piano stairs.

Now I would like to discuss on the fun & usability. As a user experience professional, I always keep users’ goal in my mind such as running a search query, adding to cart, registration, placing order, which is a standard and correct process. However, we ux professionals’ goal s not only to help user achieve their goal in a pain-free process, but also keep the user engaged. According to D. Normans “Emotional Design”, adding positive emotional qualities (in this case, fun) in a design changes the user’s overall perception of the products utility and usability—PERCEPTION.

Here are some more examples,

Google Reader Fun (classical contra cheat upup downdown left right left right BA)

Flickr Fun Greetings

Some people may argue we should never compromise usability for fun. I am with this idea, partially, cuz I believe, fun complements usability. So, you have any fun products in your mind?

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