Fun Theory

I visited this website, and quickly recognized one of the videos on the home page. A friend of mine had sent me the "Piano Stairs" video and I had also thought it was interesting, but never quite grasped the concept as to why people chose to walk up the stairs that played music rather than take the escalator. However, after today's lecture in class, and also after reading the first chapter in our class book, I realized that fun can be a motivational factor by itself. As I think about it, I definitely think that I would rather walk up the stairs as long as it played music. If only all the stairs on campus played music, then people wouldn't take the elevators.
As I was looking around on the site, I came across the ideas that were submitted for a recent contest and saw the idea called "Toy Soap." The "Toy Soap" concept was made for children to want to get clean which included a toy built into the soap as a prize/reward which is also another motivational factor. This caught my attention for two reasons. One I would have loved to have toys in my soap when I was younger, and two at one of my jobs we had something like this. I work at Coach House Gifts, and one of our items for sale was called "Money Soap." Inside the "Money Soap" there was either $1, $5, $10, $20, or possibly even $50. The only catch was, the soap itself cost around $11. I saw many customers admire the idea, but dislike the cost of it. However, our store seemed to sell out completely of the "Money Soap" anyways. So the idea that there is fun and a reward involved is definitely a motivational factor for our customers to buy the soap.
As far as other ideas or concepts from www.thefuntheory.com, I think many were very good ideas, and I would like to see them actually used. For instance, if recycling was more fun, I definitely would like to take the recycling to the recycling centers more often. Especially if it was like the Bottle Bank Arcade which you can see at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSiHjMU-MUo&feature=player_embedded