In Keith Robinson’s article on User Experience and Expectation, he references the piano stairs experiment to illustrate how a product can exceed users’ expectations by developing an emotional connection with a design:
“This is a great example to think about! The design of the stairs, while not technically better than that of the escalator, drew 66% more people once it was designed to be fun. I think the implications of that are amazing. Meeting expectations is a great baseline, but to do something great you’ll want to go beyond that.”
A blog full of thoughts and observations on making the web a better place, collected by Sarah Harrison.
Recommended reading
blogs
52 Weeks of UX — usually updated weekly with two short & sweet articles on a variety of topics related to design for the Web. Really good stuff.
A List Apart — I’ve been a reader since probably 2001, and they keep producing quality content, year after year.
Asterisk 52 — The experienced and talented D. Keith Robinson writes about web design, game design, and more.
Brown Blog — From Matt Brown and Tiffani Jones, a fearsome duo producing some useful and straightforward articles on web design, content strategy, and more.
Smashing Magazine — I have kind of a love-hate relationship with this blog. Half their articles are mindless lists of lists clearly aimed at driving traffic, but then there's a steady undercurrent of real, useful, meaty content sprinkled throughout.
User Interface Engineering Brain Sparks — The blog at UIE.com, from usability researcher and speaker Jared Spool, is full of examples, insight, interviews with designers from all over the world, and a lot of great information.
UX Booth — I'm a new reader of this User Experience and usability focused blog, but what I've seen so far has been really useful and interesting.
A blog full of thoughts and observations on making the web a better place, collected by 
