An 18-story office building's elevator was reprogrammed to shame people selecting low floors, calling them lazy and urging stairs instead. Surveillance captured confused and embarrassed reactions, testing whether public humiliation could break the habit of taking elevators for short trips.
Congestion in elevators is a frustrating problem. To reduce crowding in this 18-story building, we're programming the buttons in the elevator so if anyone selects the first few floors, a rude message gets played. And we're installing surveillance cameras so we can see the results. The question is, can we shame lazy elevator users into taking the stairs?
It's only a short walk to your floor. Please exit and take the stairs.
I hope I'm not getting off first. I'll be like, really? I'm supposed to walk?
Please exit and take the stairs. Bobby, I'm late. They should be ashamed of taking the elevator to the second floor. Please exit and take the stairs.
Shame can be a powerful motivator to change people's behavior. In 2012, Ohio Judge Pinky Carr ordered a woman who drove on a sidewalk to avoid a school bus to sit in a Cleveland intersection during rush hour wearing a sign telling everybody what she had done. Another woman, as punishment for abandoning 35 kittens in a public park, was ordered by a different judge to spend a fearful night there alone, to experience the same anguish as the kittens. I'm gonna take a page from Judge Pinky's playbook. The polite message worked okay, but I'm betting that a more embarrassing elevator message will increase the shame factor and work even better.
Hey, lazy, take the stairs. I think this is great. I think it's absolutely outstanding. Hey, lazy, take the stairs. I think that was aimed at me. Hey, lazy, take the stairs. Okay. Hey, lazy, take the stairs.
For the first 6 months that we were in this building, I didn't even know the stairs were there, which is embarrassing. We probably have gotten lazy in taking the elevator, but I think everyone in the city is on autopilot. You kind of have blinders on and you just go to what you know, which is the elevator.
I guess I was just kind of confused. Why is the elevator telling me that I'm lazy? Take the stairs. Then I just kind of got out because I was like, all right, this is awkward. When the elevator's talking to you, I guess there's a problem.
Take the stairs.
Our elevator of shame increased foot traffic on the stairs by 50%. Take the stairs. Changing to the more direct message seemed to make the difference.
