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Japanese and German car giants didn’t get where they are today without appreciating the need for fun. That’s probably not an opening sentence you expect to read every day. It’s strange, but nonetheless true, that their serious-minded devotion to fun is partly responsible for making these two nations pre-eminent in car production. There are lessons to be learned from fun. By catching people off-guard we can observe behaviour and learn how to influence them in the way we want.

Take a good look at the video. It’s an experiment in changing behaviour (using stairs instead of the escalator) to improve fitness. But instead of using negatives (lecturing, badgering or removing the escalator), they used a positive – they made it more fun to take the stairs than use the escalator.

This is the brainchild of Volkswagen and their recently launched experimental ‘Fun Factory’. As they put it, ‘this site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.’ The Piano Stairs idea is an attempt to encourage people to take more exercise and there are other ideas like ‘the world’s deepest rubbish bin’ and ‘the bottle bank arcade’. Learning how to use positives to create desirable outcomes is vital to the automotive industry; who are faced with making radical changes to car design and driver behaviour in the face of carbon reduction targets, car usage and the upcoming pan-European automatic speed limitation initiatives.

It works so well because people like to play and to be interactive – the gaming industry and the explosion in user-supplied web content prove that. But, years before either were conceived, the Japanese were using that playfulness to build better cars. Quite simply they invested a huge amount of Yen in building interactive ‘play palaces’ for grown-ups. Seemingly simple, yet powerful, games were designed for people to play.

Why devote all that time and to something with no immediate payback? Data, my friends, data. Everything was logged and analysed, from the choices made to those that were rejected. The Japanese knew that they could send out questionnaires forever and they wouldn’t learn half as much as they would by just letting people play. The unconscious choices people made helped Japanese motor manufacturers to design their cars – choosing colours, comparing the feel of materials and refining how things should sound, from a sports car exhaust to the just-right clunk of a car door closing. Potential customers were showing them exactly what appealed by just having fun and experimenting. Name me a product designer who wouldn’t sell his ‘Barcelona Chair’ for qualitative data like that.

Of course we Brits knew much better, we don’t chuck good money away on ephemera like this – which is why we have such a thriving British owned car industry. You know the one, the Indian owned Land Rover and Jaguar, Malaysian owned Lotus and not forgetting TVR, recently sold to a Russian schoolboy, who no doubt loves to play.

So what can we learn from this in the Shropshire business community?
Successful products and services are the ones that match themselves to what people actually want. People often lie to a direct question (or give you the answer they think you want to hear) but their unconscious responses, through interactivity, do not. Finding fun ways to find that out are worth a thousand consciously answered questions. Is there a cost-effective way you can introduce interaction and feedback into your business environment to help shape your business decisions? How about social networking and Facebook fan pages for a start.
Shaping changes in customer and employee behaviour. The car industry knows that the relationship between people and their cars must change. But even smaller businesses can use these techniques to make a difference.

Telford car component company, DENSO, recently won a national environmental award by challenging staff, at every level through competition, to find concrete ways to reduce, recycle and reuse. Consequently they no longer send any waste to landfill.

Are there fun ways of motivating your staff to change working practices, selling techniques, anything that could affect the operational business? Can you use fun to find out how to improve the business or reshape their behaviour to better suit your business?

It can be done. All it needs is a sense of fun – just like those laugh-a-minute Germans. For more ideas take a look at ‘The World’s Deepest Bin’ and ‘Bottle Bank Arcade Machine’ at www.thefuntheory.com.

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