Twitter had a challenge for the creative community to create something beautiful or useful using Twitter at its heart. The winning ideas would get made into real products and shown at a special event at Somerset House in London.
I decided to create something useful to help people stop smoking.
Smoking is bad mmmkay...
But what if we could use Twitter as a support network for people trying to kick the habit? And do so as frictionlessly as possible?
AshTag is a lighter that pairs up with your phone. Having made a public pledge on Twitter to give up smoking, the AshTag lighter then tweets your progress on your behalf every time you spark up. It keeps you honest on your journey to giving up, eliciting praise and encouragement from your friends and followers when you’re doing well (and moral support if you stray from the straight and narrow).
The lighter uses an electric coil to light your cigarette. Recharge it any time by connecting it to your laptop using USB - no gas or flames involved.
When you’ve completely given up smoking and haven’t activated your lighter in two weeks, a tweet will be sent to your followers to find out who smokes so you know who to pass it on to.
And so the journey continues.
