This paper addresses the development of Social Stairs, an intelligent musical staircase to change people's behavior in the long-term to take the stairs in favor of the elevator. Through designing with the Experiential Design Landscape (EDL) method, a design opportunity was found that social engagement encouraged people to take the stairs at work in favor of the elevator. To encourage this social behavior, people who involved each other and worked together whilst using the Social Stairs were treated with more diverse orchestral chimes that echoed up the stairwell. In this paper we reflect on the differences between the persuasive system of the well-known Piano Staircase and the Social Stairs. We report on the deployment of the Social Stairs for a period of three weeks in the public space within the university community and identify opportunities for triggering intrinsic motivation, social engagement and how to keep people involved in the long-term.

Traditionally, designers have explored the aesthetics of interaction through the relationship between the product form and the activity people use it for. However, in the increasing complexity of interconnected and multi-activity devices in the home, aesthetics have been sacrificed in a move to increase usability. In this paper, we present an emerging theory that interaction designs that take a contextual integration approach can draw interaction aesthetics from the context instead of the activity to address the increased complexity. In addition, we present a conceptual interaction widget called the fabric-circle-slider that draws its interaction aesthetic from a lounge chairthe context of use -and supports interaction with many devices.

No abstract