Publication
Germ Destroyer – A Gamified System to Increase the Hand Washing Duration in Shared Bathrooms
Maximilian Altmeyer; Pascal Lessel; Marc Schubhan; Vladislav Hnatovskiy; Antonio Krüger
In: Proceedings of the the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium On Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI Play-2019), October 22-25, Barcelona, Spain, ISBN 978-1-4503-6688-5/19/10, ACM, 2019.
Abstract
Washing hands is important for public health as it prevents
spreading germs to other people. One of the most important
factors in cleaning hands is the hand washing duration. However,
people mostly do not wash their hands for a long enough
time leading to infections and diseases for themselves and others.
To counter this, we present “Germ Destroyer”, a system
consisting of a sensing device which can be mounted on the
water tap and a mobile application providing gameful feedback
to encourage users to meet the recommended duration.
In the mobile application, users kill germs and collect points
by washing their hands. Through a laboratory study (N=14)
and a 10-day in-the-wild study (363 hand washing sessions),
we found that Germ Destroyer enhances the enjoyment of
hand washing, reduces the perceived hand washing duration,
almost doubles the actual hand washing duration, and has the
potential to reduce the risk of infection.