Lit2Quit: A Mobile Game for Smoking Reduction—develops and evaluates a smoking reduction game delivered on a mobile phone. The game is intended to be an alternative to smoking with the goal of reducing or eliminating tobacco use in players’ lives. The game involves breathing into a microphone to control gameplay and is coupled with sound, color, images, challenges and feedback to mimic the stimulant and relaxant effects of smoking. The game is designed with two modes of play (“Rush” and “Relax”). These will be tested for their stimulant and relaxation effects through emotional response and physiological (EEG, heart rate & galvanic skin response) measures, and compared to subjects after smoking or after playing the game in lieu of smoking. If successful, the game will emulate the effects of smoking as a replacement therapy for smokers who want to quit. Lit has won a Pioneer grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in the amount of $150000, led by Dr. Charles Kinzer as the Principal Investigator.
My Role in this project: I have been central to the development of the Lit2Quit project from the beginning, including conceptual development, game design, prototype creation and more. With a group of colleagues, we wrote multiple drafts of the grant proposal that won us funding to complete our project, and refined our research questions along with developing novel methods to answer them. Due to my background in systems engineering and signal processing, I have taken the lead on taking and analyzing physiological measurements such as electroencephalographic (EEG) and skin conductance tests. Further, I have done substantial research on the interaction between psychological and technological factors, such as the affective impact of game design and motivation factors in game play.
