About Happy Lungs

Happy Lungs is a smoking cessation app which helps users quit smoking works by inducing hypocrisy.

According to the Cochrane Review 2019 (Subramaniam et al.,2019), there is moderate-certainty evidence that even the simplest form of smoking cessation apps improve smoking cessation rates, either delivered on their own or as an add-on to other treatments. However, due to variation in functionalities of the mobile apps, research is still needed to understand the effective elements components and durations of these types of intervention.

Given the difficulty involved in quitting smoking, cognitive dissonance theory would predict that smokers are more likely to adjust their beliefs to justify their behaviour than change their smoking behaviour. Specifically, smokers have been known to discount relevance of anti-smoking messages by rationalising inconsistent behaviour. Among cognitive dissonance techniques, HI is most commonly used (Freijy, T., & Kothe, 2013) and it is most effective at inciting change across a range of health behaviours (Freijy, T., & Kothe, 2013).

Hypocrisy induction in Happy Lungs works through a nomination system where users can nominate close friends and/or family members to take part in smoking cessation journey. Nominees will have access to smokers’ smoke logs and smokerlyser records. There is also an in-app chatbot to prompt series of how/why questions to further induce hypocrisy.

We collaborated with the team at National University of Singapore (NUS) to come up with the research-backed UI/UX Design for Happy Lungs.

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