If you want all of the Netherlands to stop smoking overnight, how do you approach it?

Research shows that banning cigarettes won’t do anything. The sale of tobacco will just shift itself to banana-filled shipping containers and shady street deals.

We think to truly stop smoking, you can’t ban it but you need to make it extremely inconvenient.

In this project we researched the impact of smoke on non-smoking people. One blow of smoke can linger in the air to be breathed in by another person for up to 50 minutes. For 50 minutes after you had your nicotine hit, your smoke can give somebody else lung cancer.

So we invented a solution to smoking by posing as a solution for secondhand smoke. From now on, you cannot blow out your smoke into the air. Everyone who smokes now has to carry a small balloon to blow out their smoke in. A smoke bladder, if you will.

The more you smoke, the bigger your balloon. You’re forced to always carry it around. Imagine the inconvenience of shopping with a balloon the size of a skippy ball, or travelling by train during rush hour.

By visualising this bad habit, this project highlights the inconvenience it causes for other people. Social control plays a large part in how well this measurement could work.