Website to help break the habit of face touching

Designers Mike Bodge and Isaac Blankensmith and technologist Brian Moore where trying to follow the health and safety measures suggested by the WHO to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, they were finding it difficult to avoid face touching. “We all work at our desks all day and pretty much touch our faces all the time. We decided to make a tool that can help train us to break that habit" Bodge explained in an interview.

So, they developed Donottouchyouface.com - a website that is meant to help people avoid touching their faces. Through the computers webcam, and using a Tensorflow.js algorithm, the website is able to detect when a person touches their face and then emits a warning sign every time it happens.

To train the machine learning algorithm , the users must first record small videos of themselves touching and not touching their faces, so the algorithm can tell the different. The program is then meant to be kept running on the background so it can detect face touching the entire time the user is at the computer.

To make sure the privacy of the users is protected, the developers ensure in the website that they do not keep the user’s information. “This entire site runs locally—all the calculations from your webcam and alerts are done on your computer and are never sent over the internet.”

The developers are happy with the results. Moore says “ I have used it. It's on right now and has been all morning—it's amazing how much I touch my face and I think it really has helped me thus far.” And Blankensmith adds "I’ve had the website running in a background tab constantly since we launched," he said. "I’ve noticed even when not at my desk, a little voice in the back of my head says 'no!' whenever I reach for my face."

More info: donottouchyourface.com

Adapted from: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7qxb8/dont-touch-your-face-website-c...