An innovation targets adolescents’ mobile addiction by bringing family members together.
More and more adolescents are becoming addicted to mobile and screen-based products nowadays. This worrisome phenomenon affects parent-child relationships and weakens the role of the family in bolstering adolescents against addiction.
In collaboration with the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals’ Integrated Centre on Addiction Prevention and Treatment (ICAPT), a research team led by Mr Benny Leong and Mr Brian Lee from the Asian Lifestyle Design Lab and Dr Kenny Chow from the Interaction Design Lab of the School of Design has piloted a novel family-focused gamification design intervention that offers a promising alternative to current clinical practice on addressing the issue of adolescent mobile phone overuse.
Funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club this project is the first of its kind in Hong Kong. It has brought together design experts and addiction counselling professionals to explore collective gameplay as an intervention in enhancing family cohesiveness, thereby mitigating the problem of adolescent mobile phone overuse.
The researchers created an innovative platform with gaming elements to enhance family relationship. Named “Lamb Lamp” for its animal-like appearance, the device integrates an interactive lamp with a mobile charging table. When family members place their mobile phones on the table, the lamp lights up and invites the whole family to participate in a game. Players can draw cards from the gamebook and start competitive or collaborative games, thus providing opportunities for parents and adolescents to interact and become absorbed in playful engagement.
With the help of the ICAPT, the team recruited 10 families to take part in an 8-12 week trial of the “Lamb Lamp”. The gaming activities, ranging from physical, intellectual to cognitive challenges, place parents and adolescents on an equal footing and induce them to relive happy memories of family togetherness.
Mr Benny Leong (left) and Mr Brian Lee
A related research paper won the Best Presentation Award at the Asia–Design Engineering Workshop in Seoul in 2017 hosted by The Design Society, a highly recognised international design research organisation, and another was published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction in August 2018. The project won an Outstanding Award in the Woofoo Asian Award for Advancing Family Well-being 2018, while the “Lamb Lamp” itself received a bronze award in the prestigious A’Design Award and Competition as well.
Looking ahead, the researchers plan to continue refining the “Lamb Lamp” prototype and hope to extend its application in other addiction issues or elderly homes.♦
