The Washing Hand
For the intangible interaction final, I pick working on the design Challenge: Behavior Change for Well-Being during COVID-19
As COVID-19 has hit countries globally, it has become the unfortunate hot topic of early 2020. I would love to take the opportunity of this class to work on a design solution/ idea that enable people to follow the protocols or alarm them of the situation in regards to the pandemic.
As I was thinking about potential solutions, I realized that some form of wearable design or accessory design would be great to explore in this project due to its mobility, feasibility, familiarity and comfort.
Idea 1
My first idea is apprising individuals about the body temperatures of the people around them. The common symptom of COVID-19 is flu. This means that someone with COVID-19 would have a relatively high body temperature. What would be interesting is to let people know when they are around other individuals with high body temperatures, so that they can be alarmed to maintain distance and take precautionary steps.
I thought of designing a bracelet with temperature sensors, that would detect the body heat of people in a relatively close proximity, and then alarm the user by activating the vibration motor by vibrating the bracelet if the body temperature is higher than a given/set threshold.
Sensors:
LilyPad temperature sensor ($4.50)
Vibration motor ( $2.15)
Idea 2
My second idea is alerting individuals to wash their hands after every contact with human touch. The biggest precautionary step to avoid COVID-19 is to wash your hands as often as you can before touching the face. Often individuals could forget washing their hands after coming in contact with people which could be dangerous for them. For this design idea, I would like to alert people everytime they have human contact, to wash their hands.
I thought of designing a ring, that would detect human contact using infrared sensors, and then alarm the user by activating blinking lights on the ring as a reminder to wash their hands.
Sensors:
LilyPad LED 5pcs ($2.95)
Circuit Design + Idea
I decided to go ahead with Idea 2 and present it to class. In an ideal world, I desired to use a Capacitive sensor that would sense the human body as an input and blink lights on the ring as the output. Since the size of a ring is small, Arduino allows the use of a capacitive sensor library that requires a medium to high value resistor and a piece of wire and a small (to large) piece of aluminum foil on the end. At its most sensitive, the sensor will start to sense a hand or body inches away from the sensor.
This would benefit the size of the ring as well as serve the purpose of lighting up a blinker as a reminder to wash hands.
However, due to the lack of material access during this pandemic, I decided to use a PIR sensor in place of a capacitive sensor and an LED light to demo my idea. My idea was then reformed using this circuit such that, the light on the ring remains to be ‘ON’ until the user washes his/her hands and then switches off the light on the ring. This way the ring ensures not only to be a reminder to wash hands, but also to maintain the reminder until the user has fulfilled the exercise.
An example of the circuit is shown below.
I now used the APDS9600 gesture sensor for my final prototype to detect the proximity of someone, and for the user to switch off the light once done washing his/her hands. My idea was to not confuse the hand gear with the proximity of someone and the intentional movement of switching off the light, hence the use of the APDS9600.
