In a unique way to solve the issue of walking and texting on college campuses, Utah Valley University has created staircase lanes dedicated to those who are focused on their phones, not the hall. Creative Director, Matt Bambrough, envisioned the idea and brought it to life using a staircase in the college’s Student and Wellness Center. Using neon green paint, he split the staircase into three lanes labeled “walk,” “run” and “text.”
While the project might seem extreme to a few, student Kenzie Jones notes that UVU has a huge walking and texting issue. Since the entire campus can be crossed indoors, winter can prove to be a very claustrophobic time. Students walk and text through all the buildings, and this can clog the halls. “People just walk so slowly with phones in front of their faces,” Jones mentioned. She even recalled a story about witnessing a student, who was texting while walking, collide into another student carrying a trombone. The result sent the trombone-carrying student flying.
But most of the collisions that students notice aren’t even body-to-body contact. Instead, student Robbie Poffenberger said that he has seen more human-on-inanimate-object collisions than anything else. “They walk into barriers—chairs on the side of the hallway, or railings,” he recounts. “I’m sure they’re fairly embarrassed.”
The new staircase was created as a result of these stories. Apparently, they’re almost too commonplace at UVU. “You have 18-24 year olds walking down the hall with smartphones, you’re almost bound to run into someone somewhere; it’s something we’re dealing with in this day and age,” Bambrough told Fusion. “But (preventing collisions) isn’t the reason we did it—we did it to engage the students. It’s meant to be there for people to look at and enjoy.”
The texting lane is indeed a fun project, and Bambrough hopes that it will call students’ attentions to their addiction to their phones. He knows that there won’t be drastic changes any time soon, since this seems to be the new norm amongst the technology-obsessed generation. However, calling attention to the issue may help students learn to make an attempt to put their phones down—at least while walking through the halls.