L'observatoire Data & Créativité by iligo

Breath of Life

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a condition that affects 100 million adults in China and is one of the top three causes of death in China. However only around 7% of them are properly diagnosed.
GSK wanted to raise the awareness of COPD among Chinese people by introducing a simple and easy-to-use self-test tool with easy access.

Smartphone is widely equipped, and Wechat is the most used mobile application in China. GSK decided to turn smartphones into the self-test tool that everyone can have access to.
Integrated in Wechat, this program allows users to breathe directly into their smartphones to produce a lung capacity reading. The campaign drew creative inspiration from traditional Chinese ‘blowing-ink’ art, whereby the size of animated trees in the app grow to reflect the user’s lung capacity.
If users achieve a breath test score of less than 70%, the tool alerts them to undergo a hospital check-up. Users can share their bespoke tree artwork on social media to encourage more people to self-test.

The COPD is determined by the volume of a breath blew in a second versus the total volume
When the user blows directly into his smartphone, the microphone on the mobile records the sound of breath to produce a soundwave.
The by an algorithm specially developed for this campaign, the figure of a tree is created based on the soundwave, thus the calculated lung capacity.