How to stop touching your face — Behavioral Design and COVID-19
Read in Spanish (here)
Note: At the time I wrote this article, mask were being discouraged from usage, so this advise made sense. The effects that I was looking to cause on people by wearing tape on their fingers (increase care in face touching and to project a sense of care to other) were eventually created by using masks.
By now, with cases growing exponentially, We already know that the coronavirus (COVID-19) is defeated with behavior.
We all know how we are supposed to prevent it:
- Regularly wash your hands
- Cough on your elbow or tissue
- Stay in home if possible or if we have symptoms
- Not touching our faces!
However it is highly probable that you have already touched your face since you first started reading, and you are still coughing in your hand or you still greet somebody shaking his hand without even noticing. Habits die hard!
My job its to design products and services that build (or destroy) habits so I make my little contribution to help ease the global pandemic. First and foremost, I stay home avoiding any unnecessary contact with other people. This is of utter importance to flatten the curve and help prevent overcrowding the health system. But, for those instances when you need to go outside and interact with others I want to help you with a technique that help you prevent getting the virus
One of the most important things to change is learn not to touch your face. Thats how you prevent the virus from coming into your body. We touch our face 20 to 30 times an hour!
That’s why, when I leave my home, I’m using color wire tape on my index fingers.
If the tape touches my face, I have to disinfect and apply tape again on my fingers.
A little Theory…
(if you want you can skip this)
There is a behavior model that proposes that in order for a behavior to happen, you need three components: you need to want to do something (Motivation), be able to do it (Ability) and a trigger that makes us consider whether to do something (Trigger). In a conscious decision this elements are really simple to identify:
As an example (not exhaustive) Buying doughnuts:
- Motivation: I like doughnuts and I´m hungry
- Ability: I have a store nearby and money.
- Triggering: A coworker asks: let’s get something to eat!
However, the behaviors recommended to prevent contagion are habits, this means that by repetition our brain has already learnt the relationship between the triggering event and the behaviour to perform and decides to perform it in an automatic way, without considering if we want to do it. In his book “Thinking fast and Slow” nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman names these two ways of operation as System 1 (automatic) and System 2 (conscious). System 1 allows us to go around our lives without being conscious of each and every one of our actions, and help us focus our efforts into non trivial tasks, but sometimes this plays against our interests.
Why Tape?
I want to stop touching my face. I have the motivation, but I just keep doing it! That’s the problem, system 1 skips the motivation check. The two elements that I can change are ability (make it more difficult to touch my face) and triggering. A super effective way to affect my ability would be to tie my hands, making the act impossible, but I find it not really practical to do so when I’m out for groceries.
The tape on my index finger makes just about everything more difficult, scratching your nose, rubbing your eyes. That little extra effort can make us jump from “habit mode” to a conscious decision.
The tapes act as a way to modify my triggers. The constant pressure of the tapes on my fingers and the general uncomfortableness they create remind me that I should watch my actions. Having tape on my finger also alters the way my habits work: In normal conditions my brain knows that one of my eyes itches then I rub it. However, the tapes change the normal conditions, I have to find a way to rub my eyes without the tapes hurting my eyes, and therefore System 2 ( conscious) takes over
Why change the tapes if we mess up?
This has nothing to do with hygiene (there might even be sanitary objections of me carrying around plastic in my hands). The idea of washing my hands and reapplying the tapes when I mess up is a way of punishment, and what better way of punishing my brain than using what my brain tries to avoid the most? To Work!
Safe Zones
Triggering fatigue exists. When a car alarm goes off over and over it stops being a trigger and becomes just noise that we filter out, so it loses its effectiveness. That’s why I just use the tapes when I’m outside of my home. As a plus, when I arrive I have sticky fingers so I have a reminder to wash my hands!
As an awareness ribbon
I would love that this idea reach to many, and the tapes start to have a new function, that they dont have so far, to tell everyone that I’m trying to avoid a covid-19 and I would like to be told if you see me touching my face (and suggest me to change the tapes!)
Does this work?
It does for me, but I have no proof that it will work for you ( if you try please let me know!) but it cost nothing to try it out! And if you ever see anyone wearing tapes know they are trying this out.
