FaceAvoid — can we use technology to nudge people not to touch their faces during the Covid-19 pandemic?
Authors: Rohan Hundia & Aditya Vijayvargiya
The coronavirus outbreak has taken the world by a storm where countries are seeing cases doubling every few days to a week. Measures such as physical distancing, self-isolation and enforced lockdowns remain critical in ‘flattening the curve’. With the unfathomable spread of the outbreak, healthcare professionals, doctors, nurses, governments are making appreciable efforts to slow down the spread but continue to remain in an intense fight of ‘tug of war’ with the virus.
Aside from being in isolation and practicing physical distancing, is there any other way in which an individual could contribute in this fight against the virus? Yes! STOP TOUCHING OUR FACES. It may sound obvious and mundane at first, but by reducing unconscious face-touching and thereby altering this unconscious behaviour innate in all of us, we might be able to make a small difference.
One of the major ways of spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is by transfer of respiratory droplets from an infected person to a non-infected person, contributing to a majority of the cases. The other means of transfer is by touching infected surfaces and then our own faces by which the virus finds a way to enter our respiratory system. The former is tackled by measures of lockdown and isolation. The solutions for the latter rely on washing our hands periodically and avoiding face touching.
But how do we constantly remind ourselves to stop touching our faces, since at times it’s so subconscious? The answer lies in nudge theory. Nudges are mechanisms through which we could intervene in someone’s choice architecture and poke them to change their behaviour but without forcing them and without forbidding any alternative options. For example, in a majority of the countries the law around organ donation is opt-in which means that if citizens wish to donate their organs post-death, they need to a fill a form to opt-in. However, countries such as Belgium and UK have a system whereby the default option for a citizen is to be an organ-donor unless they explicitly opt-out. People still hold the choice to opt-out if they don’t want to be an organ donor. But by making this simple tweak in the default option and the choice architecture the number of organ donors is greatly increased. Another example of nudges is their use in day to day phone apps to constantly remind ourselves to follow a schedule or make/break a habit etc.
So, could we maybe make use of technology and nudge ourselves to stop touching our faces and thereby alter our behaviour?
The answer lies in a very simple piece of interface we developed — FaceAvoid: a wrist-band embedded interface that would send alert sounds whenever a person is about to touch his or her face and therefore nudge people to avoid face touching (Figure 1). Additionally, the interface also internally keeps track of and records how well the nudges are working and whether or not their a siginificant decrease in the number of face touches over days. It would also send you alerts every ’N’ hours as a means to notify you to wash your hands. A normal person touches his or her face ~200–300 times a day. This huge number means that there are several instances in a day where a person could touch an unknown infected surface and then touch their face thereby exponentially increasing their own chances of being infected. The at-home FaceAvoid mechanism will help people prevent those unnecessary face touches during the prevalent Covid-19 pandemic so that the spread of infection can be reduced.
FaceAvoid works on very simple mechanism of magnetic field repulsion and comprises two major sections:
1. A wrist band (Fig 1) which has an embedded sensor comprising a magnetometer (sensor that detects changes in magnetic field), a buzzer, a battery source and a microcontroller. The dimensions of the entire interface are 2.5cm * 3cm
2. A magnetic circular strip (Fig 2) placed on a shirt or T-shirt either near the collar or on the top buttons of the clothing (dimension 0.4 cm diameter)
Whenever users are about to touch their faces, a repulsive distortion in the magnetic field as identified by the magnetometer is created by the circular magnets near the collarbone (close to the face). This magnetic field change is used as a means to identify any possible face touch. So, when the wristband hovers near a certain distance of the magnetic strip near the collarbone (close to the face) an alert is sent off and the person becomes aware of their unconscious face-touching and thereby helps prevent unnecessary touches. It also filters the magnetic field noise in such a way that the use of other magnetic devices such as mobile phones, laptops does not interfere with the electronic interface and therefore ‘only’ detects possible face touches.
We are seeing alterations in human behaviour which are necessary at least temporarily to combat the virus. We are seeing changes in how people respect other people’s physical personal space, how we greet others, how we maintain our regular hygiene. Amongst all of these one more behavioural change needs to be added — how we constantly remind ourselves to stop touching (unconsciously) our faces.
The world is going to change forever after the COVID-19 pandemic. There already have been undeniable macro level changes in world politics, power struggle, functioning of several economies but what they stem from are the nuanced micro level behaviour changes — how we communicate, learn, work, worship, love and live will change. These aspects of our behaviour are going to shape the world as we see and the world post-pandemic.
Link to how FaceAvoid works in action: https://youtu.be/kOxgnJZU7IE, https://youtu.be/NhYtEB8wx50
