I want to do it for the novelty value of it, since I am an airline geek like the rest of us, and happen to live in the city where they're running the experiment.

Would it be enough to get me to start flying WN again? Probably not, especially since I don't see how they can implement assigned seats in a way that will be substantially better than the current "open seating" scheme. If you assign the seat at booking time, you'll have to be one of the first 35 or 40 or whatever people to buy your ticket if you want to get an "A-quality" seat, and if you assign the seat at check-in time, you still have to play the "24-hour" game. (In fact, the "24-hour game" would be worse than it is under open seating because the difference between checking in 1st and checking in 34th would be substantial, whereas in open seating both will be in the A group.)

As others have pointed out, Southwest really needs to implement a scheme to block some good seats for its most frequent flyers (that is, an elite program) if it's going to implement assigned seats. Otherwise it might end up alienating both frequent and infrequent travelers.