Rijuta Trivedi

PROCESS AND STORYBOARDS

PROTOTYPE

BACKGROUND

Increased connectivity with the rest of world allows us to have contact with all kinds of people, cultures, animals, plants, and especially germs.

To tackle this space, we narrowed our focus to the individual's ability to stay healthy in a germy world. Spreading of infectious diseases is often made worse by thoughtless actions that go against our understanding of healthy behaviors. We don’t even think about how often we touch our face throughout the day, yet it is the main way that germs get into our body. Think about the surfaces you touch everyday: door handles, water fountain knobs, handlebars on the bus. Germs can survive on these objects for days.

PROCESS

Following an ideation phase, we interviewed Dr. Sara Mackenzie, Assistant Dean of the School of Public Health and physician at UW Hall Health to gain some insight on the problem area and spoke about public health campaigns  and current trends in health-tracking wearable devices such as FitBit and Jawbone. Dr. Mackenzie confirmed that  touching your face is one of the most common ways to spread and ingest germs in the environment. 
Starting to think about the sensing device end, we conducted another interview with Scott Saponas from Microsoft Research to understand the technology behind sensing human gestures so Nudge knows to buzz when your hands are close to the face. There is relevant research also being done by UW CS Phd student Gabe Cohn on Humanantenna - sensing gestures using body as an antenna which we referred.

CONCEPT

Nudge is a wearable device in form of a temporary tattoo/patch that helps people stay healthy during cold and flu season. If we want to have a better chance of staying healthy when everyone around us is buried in Kleenex, we need to break ourselves of certain habits. With the use of nano-sensors Nudge can detect when you are about to touch your face, and it will gently buzz to remind you that that's gross.

Vibrating Feedback After calibration, Nudge will vibrate every time you go to touch your face as a gentle reminder to stay away from your eyes, nose, & mouth.

Vitamin Intake Nudge senses your vitamin intake and lets you know when your levels are getting low and you need to take your vitamins.

Hydration Levels Nudge lets you know when you’re starting to get dehydrated and reminds you to drink water.

POTENTIAL USES

We envision the Nudge patch as an affordable, easily distributable device that keeps people healthy by changing their behavior. The portable packaging makes Nudge an ideal tool for wide distribution and education about disease transmission in third world countries. Nudge has the potential to modify other unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking, nail biting, ritual snacking from the couch, or anything else that users just aren’t aware of.