Vaping is two things at once. Nicotine replacement handles one. NOQA One is built for the other, the physical habit nobody else designs for, and this page shows exactly which research drove which design choice.
Developed with UK health
innovation partners
Forget how it feels for a moment and count the movements instead. In a nationally representative US survey of young people who vape, the device was picked up 26 times a day. That is a routine rehearsed more often than most people check the weather, and a routine that well practised is not something to fight. It is something to give a better object to.
That frequency is the whole reason NOQA One exists. What follows is what the research says about routines repeated that often, and what each finding made us build.
26×
More than once an hour, every waking hour. Measured in people aged 12 to 30 who vape.
Mongilio, Kcomt & Evans-Polce (2026), Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Nationally representative US survey, n = 2,606. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2026.113121
67
About four each time it's picked up. The routine is the repetition.
Same study. Mean puffs per day 66.9. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2026.113121
A habit doesn't consult you. So we built for the habit, not the decision.
Researchers have spent years testing whether habits secretly depend on what you want. The evidence says they don't. A habit is a link between a situation and a response, and once it's built, the situation is enough on its own. Your goals can run alongside it. They can't switch it off.
So the gap between deciding and doing isn't a character flaw, and it isn't a motivation problem. It's structural. And that is the best news on this page. If the reach doesn't answer to willpower, you don't have to win an argument with it two hundred times a day. You just have to give it somewhere better to land. That is a design problem, and design problems can be solved. NOQA One is our answer to this one.
Wood, Mazar & Neal (2022), Perspectives on Psychological Science - habitual responses are "activated regardless of goals". doi:10.1177/1745691621994226
Wood & Rünger (2016), Annual Review of Psychology - habits are "the efficient, default mode of response". doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417
You can't out-decide a habit. You can redirect it.
Tested across social psychology, health psychology, behavioural neuroscience, animal learning and computational modelling. The finding holds in all five.
We didn't start with a product and look for research to dress it up. We started with what is known about physical habits - including the two findings above - and let it decide the specification. Each finding below is followed by the decision it produced.
This is research into how habits work in everyone, not a study of our product. We treated it as the brief. NOQA One is what came out the other side.
What the research shows
In a nationally representative US survey, young people who vape picked the device up 26 times a day and took about four puffs each time - roughly 67 puffs daily.
Mongilio, Kcomt & Evans-Polce (2026), Drug and Alcohol Dependence. n = 2,606, aged 12 to 30. doi:10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2026.113121
So this is how we built it
We stopped designing a product and started designing a tool that gets handled twenty-six times a day. That single number set the weight, the materials and the finish. Anything that scuffs, loosens or feels cheap by week three fails at this frequency.
What the research shows
Habits are learned links between a context and a response. Once the link exists, perceiving the context is enough to trigger the response - no decision in between.
Wood & Neal (2007), Psychological Review. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843
So this is how we built it
An object that lives in a drawer is useless here. NOQA One is sized and weighted to occupy the same places the old one did - the pocket, the desk, the arm of the chair - so it is already in reach when your hand goes looking.
What the research shows
Across five studies, being tired or stretched thin didn't weaken habitual responding - it increased it. The automatic system runs hardest exactly when deliberate attention is least available.
Neal, Wood & Drolet (2013), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Five studies, field and laboratory. doi:10.1037/a0032626
So this is how we built it
So it cannot require any thought to work. No charging, no pairing, no settings, no consumable to remember. Pick it up and draw. If a product needs you at your best, it has misunderstood when it will actually be picked up.
What the research shows
Asked in open questions what they had looked for, most of 40 interviewees described wanting the physical sensation back rather than a substance. The paper recorded the want as "inhaling from a cylindrical object".
Suttiratana et al. (2023), Addictive Behaviors. n = 40, funded by NIDA, the US FDA and the NIH. No industry funding. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2023.107710
So this is how we built it
That sentence is close to a design brief, and we treated it as one. A cylinder you draw air through - and then the harder half of the job, which is getting the diameter, the resistance and the balance right rather than approximately right.
What the research shows
Across studies of everyday habits, the median time for a new one to settle was 59 to 66 days. Individuals ranged from 4 days to 335.
Singh et al. (2024), Healthcare. Systematic review and meta-analysis. Behaviours studied were flossing, diet, water intake and physical activity. doi:10.3390/healthcare12232488
So this is how we built it
Two months at least, sometimes longer. So NOQA One is built as something you keep, not something you consume. No batteries to degrade, no cartridges on subscription. The economics of a disposable product are the wrong shape for a timescale like that.
01/05
It is tempting to file the physical routine as trivial, surface decoration on something chemical. One field experiment makes that impossible to hold. Researchers gave cinemagoers popcorn, some fresh and some a week old. People with a strong cinema-popcorn habit ate the same amount either way. How hungry they were barely mattered. Whether they liked it barely mattered. Being in the cinema mattered.
People without the habit did the obvious thing and left the stale popcorn.
Read that as a warning and it is grim. Read it the way we did and it is a gift. A routine that powerful doesn't need to be fought. It needs a better object waiting at the end of the reach, and NOQA One is built to be that object.
A physical routine can override taste and appetite with nothing pharmacological involved. It was popcorn. Imagine what one built on purpose can do.
Neal, Wood, Wu & Kurlander (2011), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Two field experiments. doi:10.1177/0146167211419863
Wood & Rünger (2016), Annual Review of Psychology - habit as the efficient, default mode of response. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033417
Strong habit
Weak habit
UK patent application GB2601042.1.
Weight
29 g
Enough weight to feel considered. Light enough to disappear into a pocket.
Material
Aluminium + ABS
An anodised aluminium shell over durable, BPA-free ABS components.
The draw
Adjustable airflow
Dial the resistance to suit you. Air moves. Nothing heats, burns or vaporises.
Finish
Anodised aluminium
Built to be handled two hundred times a day and still look new in month three.
Power
None
No battery. No charging. No electronics. Pick it up and use it.
Consumables
3 × flavour cores
100% polyester cores, individually filled to 800 mg and supplied three per pouch.
Straight
answers.
Plenty of products in this category promise the moon. We’d rather tell you exactly what NOQA One does, why it’s built the way it is, and where the NHS fits alongside it.
No. NOQA One is a consumer product, so there’s no prescription, no pharmacy queue and no leaflet longer than the box. It isn’t a medicine and it isn’t a medical device, because it doesn’t work on your chemistry. It works on the thing chemistry never touched. The habit. The hundreds of automatic reaches a day that outlast the nicotine by months, and that most people underestimate right up until they relapse over one of them.
Here’s what we can say. Nicotine is one half of a vape. The other half is a habit your hands have rehearsed tens of thousands of times, and it’s the half that quietly drags people back long after the withdrawal has gone. NOQA One is built for that half. Same reach, same draw, same pause, with zero nicotine and nothing to charge. In our own testing with former vapers, holding that habit in place while the nicotine faded made a serious difference to how far they got. We’re not allowed to promise you an outcome, and we won’t. We built it because patches and gum leave this half of the job undone, and we’ve watched it matter.
Showing you why the habit deserves far more respect than it gets. The science on this page is about how routines form, how often they fire without you deciding anything, and why the physical half of a vape survives long after the nicotine is gone. That half is where most relapses live, and it’s the half every patch, gum and pep talk ignores. NOQA One was designed around it on purpose. The research isn’t a promise about what happens after you pick it up. It’s the reason we’re confident the thing in your hand is doing real work.
Talk to your GP or your local NHS Stop Smoking Service. Nicotine replacement is free, it’s good at the chemistry, and we’d use it alongside NOQA One rather than instead of it. Because NRT isn’t a silver bullet either. A patch does nothing for the reach your hand makes two hundred times a day, and that reach is where most people come unstuck once the patches come off. Chemistry sorted by them. Hands sorted by us. That’s a bloody good team, and it’s how the people we’ve tested it with got the furthest.
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