Persuasive technology: Stairs conditioning - aScent

Walking up one stairway has a relatively negligible influence on health. However, if you walk up every stairway you encounter, the numbers add up, and a campaign starts to make sense.

We want to change the experience people have when approaching stairways in order to make them take all stairs, not just one. This means that people need to start appreciating ascending stairways everywhere, and prefer them above escalators and elevators.

Image a stairway smelling nice; creating subconscious positive attributes to it. A campaign should be started where many randomly chosen public staircases in the city offer this new sensation. After a while the amount of stairways with the aScent experience reduces, but people become conditioned in the fact that stairways are positive, and only need small and scattered reminders in their daily routine. They might even start searching for the stairs that provide the experience.
For persuasion purposes the concept has two different stages of experience. When entering the stairway you smell a nice flowery scent, and feel a cool summer breeze. This is the praise that people get for approaching and starting with the ascent. When people reach the top they are rewarded with a healthy ocean-like scent. This reminds them of their healthy activity without thinking about it.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• persuasion
• persuasive technology
• stairs
• conditioning
• scent
• smell
• aScent
• Niko Vegt
• Niels Molenaar