Crafting Animated Parables to Track Smoking

 

Incingarette is an Internet-of-Things (IoT) system that assists people in smoking reduction. It consists of a smart ashtray with a digital picture frame. When a person smokes, the digital picture starts to be gradually covered with dirt. The design draws on psychology research insights that frequently imagining an event renders it seemingly more likely. With always-on sensing technologies, virtual feedback can be designed to provide frequent experiences that tie the real-life behavior with imaginary outcomes, which can affect one’s behavioral intention. Field trials of the working prototype demonstrate incremental change in intention to reduce smoking.

Figure 1. A working prototype of Incingarette simulating the digital picture frame mounted on the wall in a smoking cabin.

 

Figure 2. The design of Incingarette blends the concepts of smoking and incinerating. The use of the ashtray causes the digital picture to be covered by dirt. When the ashtray is not used, the dirt is gradually washed away.

 

Figure 3. The use of the ashtray is detected by weight sensors, and the data is processed by the microcontroller, which communicates to the cloud server that renders the digital picture.

 

Figure 4. A field trial of the working prototype with a participant.

 

 

 

Effects on Closeness, Empathy, and Game Immersion

 

This project investigated the effect of experiencing the perspective of a non-player character (NPC) in prosocial virtual reality (VR) games. In prosocial VR games, players usually take the role of a heroic player character and help other NPCs such as victims attacked by villains. This project examined if the players can experience the perspective of a victim NPC before a gameplay would influence their gameplay experiences. With a VR game made with Unity, the team conducted a lab-based study. The result shows that the perspective-taking of a NPC indirectly enhances light gamers’ level of immersion into a prosocial VR game, through its effect on perceived closeness to and empathy to the NPC. But the effect was not found among the heavy gamers. More details can be found in the paper published in Behaviour & Information Technology:

Ho, J. C. F., & Ng, R. (2020). Perspective-Taking of Non-Player Characters in Prosocial Virtual Reality Games: Effects on Closeness, Empathy, and Game Immersion. Behaviour & Information Technology. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2020.1864018 (Online First)

Before a gameplay, players experience what it is like to be a victim – a robot being destroyed (Left and middle). In the gameplay, the players need to use water guns to protect the remaining robots from fire (Right).

 

 

Team Members

Jeffrey C. F. Ho, Project leader

Ryan Ng, Team member

 

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On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.