The Fun Theory!

Tina Rosenberg’s article in New York times‘ opinion page has tackled one of the most important aspects in creative thinking. In order to create a possible solution for every problem, one must interpret the significance of human centered approach. Not only human centered according to needs but also according to INTERESTS.

I totally agree with Tina’s perspective as she has elaborated how ‘fun’ plays a role in human centered design . From the examples she stated from the tax evasion problem all the way to  the goal of reducing HIV infections: she analyzes how lottery has been the reason why solutions have successfully been made. Lottery in the cases presented has been the fun part of the prism that leads the rays of human attitudes into positive behavior. Hence, I notice here how human centered design is not only about what the user needs but we should also make a twist that would encourage the user to want to change.

Personally, I have always observed how Fun can obviously change people’s behavior. Reading this article has brought up many previous ideas that also wrapped up the idea of fun motivating human attitudes. One of which is really worth recalling :in a station in Stockholm, people overused the escalators and as a result they started to think how to make the citizens use the normal stairs? Watch this video and see what happens.

This video supports Tina’s perspective of the power of human interests. Creative thinkers in different countries used lottery tickets to encourage people to drive legally and keep their receipts. They wouldn’t have used their normal stairs unless they found it entertaining to do so .

One of the things that stood out the most to me in in NY article was that Tina didn’t neglect the responses from the critics and this is how she shows that we should always see ‘the good in the bad’ ; one of the positive attitudes for creativity. I love how she phrases it as ‘people are fined for bad behavior all the time. Rewarding them for good behavior is essentially the same action, in reverse.’ when people criticized that money would make things worse.  This reminds me of a psychological theory in behavioral science where positive reinforcement better improves the repetition of an attitude  over punishment .

In essence, Rosenberg’s article well-supports many ideas that prove how thinking about consequences actually augments starting about behaviors. People should not underestimate the power of lottery, nor neglect the amazing influence of fun!!