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Increasing general hygiene by motivating people to wash their hands correctly
Motivation
Motivation
We started our project with the problem, that touchless activated water taps often cause problems and frustration when trying to activate the faucet because they do not work reliably.
We want to solve this issue and after pivoting several times during our product development cycle we ended up with the idea to use tap-activation to activate the tap reliable and to use a display to motivate the user to wash their hands for the required amount of time.
Problem Statement
Problem Statement
Handwashing is known to be a great preventative measure against communicable diseases. The CDC recommends washing your hands for at least 20 seconds, however, only 5% of people wash their hands for the proper amount of time.
FinalVideoCapstone2.mp4OUR LOGO!
Design Goals / objectives
Design Goals / objectives
Create a sink that incentivizes the user to wash their hands for longer than the washing time when using a traditional sink
Increase the general awareness of hand washing practices
Device must be easy to use and intuitive for all users
Our measurements for success are to create a prototype with tap-activation of the faucet that works nearly 100% reliably and to be able to increase the hand-washing time of our test users when they use our prototype
During our human-centered deisgn process we noticed from our first user testing that our tap-activation design not intuitive enough was. We used the user feedback to improve that and include a message on our display that explains to the user where he has to tap to activate the faucet.
We also pivoted away from using UV-light to detect bacteria because the users were afraid of putting their hands into the UV-light box and we were having technical problems with that approach.
System Diagram
The system diagram on the left explains how Sink Again works!
First, the user looks at the display that says that the surface of the faucet has to be touched to activate the water tap.
After activating, a capacitive touch signal is sent to an arduino which then activates the water flow and the display for the next 20 seconds.
A countdown and further information on the display tells the users how long they have to wash their hands and the water is automatically deactivated after 20 seconds.
With the usage of our timer-display, we were able to increase the average hand-washing time of our 50 test users from 11.4 seconds to 18.8 seconds!
That is a great accomplishment and shows that our prototype is able to increase bathrrom hygiene.
The chart on the right shows that we were able to create a prototype that is reliable and as simple as possible.
During the user testing we noticed that our prototype is not intuitive enough, because the users were used to touchless-activated faucets.
Also, we did not have the possibilities to run tests, how much cleaner the hands are after our increased washing time.
Future Directions
Future Directions
Improve the industrial desgin of the prototype
Making our tap-activation feature more intuitive
Increase the look of the images and contents that we are showing on the display
More user testing to get as much feedback for improvements as possible
The Sink Again Team
The Sink Again Team
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Samosky, as well as Jess Steinberg and Jessie Axelson for their support!
This project was developed as part of the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering course ENGR 0716
The Art of Making: An Introduction to Hands-On System Design and Engineering
Credit for music in our video: www.purple-planet.com
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