Laughter as a controller in a stress buster game

Laughter has been known to have therapeutic benefits ranging from reducing stress and inflammation in the short term to lowering cholesterol and blood pressure in the longer term. Studies have also shown that even faked laughter could provide some of these benefits. In this paper, we present the design and validation of a game, "Laugh Out Loud", in which laughter acts as the controller of the game mechanics. The goal of the game is to bloom a wilted flower by laughing. The primary components of this system are a laughter detector and a game interface. The laughter detector is a machine learning algorithm that analyses signals recorded by the microphone in real time and measures the intensity and duration of laughter. The game interface displays a wilted flower that starts blooming step by step as the player laughs, with a fully bloomed flower at the final level. Each level has an increasing level of difficulty, which means that the player has to laugh louder and longer for crossing the higher levels. The game interface is implemented as an Android app, with the intention of making the well-being intervention available anytime, anywhere. To validate the game, we conducted a study in which 48 participants were asked to play the game, one at a time, while seated alone in a closed room. 76.6 % participants reported that they experienced reduced stress after playing the game. We present findings of this study and observations that could lead to some design improvements.