Smoke Free

The stop smoking app

that science built

Smoke Free – in numbers

• 500,000 users in less than 2 years

• 1.5 million diary entries

• More than 1 million user sessions and 9 million screen views last month

• 1,839 five star reviews (79 one and two star)

The problem

• Smoking is the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the UK

• Smoking will kill 500m people alive today (Prochaska et al., 1993)

• Most people who smoke want to stop (e.g. Robinson et al., 2009)

• But the vast majority of quit attempts fail (e.g. West et al. 2007)

• Therefore, the key task is to help people maintain their quit

Image: Frieka Janssens

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Our solution

• Driven by Rothman’s theory of behavioural maintenance

• Evidence-based and theory driven

• Incorporates 22 established behaviour change techniques

• Constantly evaluate effectiveness and seek to improve it

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The experiment

• Experimental group given a mission each day for first 31

days of their quit

• Designed to help them:

• Appreciate the benefits of non-smoking

• Manage cravings

• Recast themselves as a non-smoker

• Feel a sense of progress

Results:

• Experimental group twice as likely to be smoke free at three

months post-quit (OR: 2.11, 95% CI: 1.81-2.45, p=<0.001)

The future

• Run more experiments

• Constantly improve effectiveness

• Improve revenue model

• Free version gathers data for experiments

• Paid version includes techniques proven to work

• Calls to action triggered at appropriate moments

• Release other apps

• Drink Less coming soon

• Other behaviour change domains addressed later

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Thank you

Any questions?