Coronavirus is intense, and it’s spreading quickly. As the number of confirmed cases in Australia continues to rise, we’re all looking for ways to stop the spread. Things like washing your hands properly are simple enough, but something like touching your face is harder to stop because of just how often we all do it. It’s an important step to take though, so why not pick up some motivation from having a website yell at you about it?
Enter donottouchyourface.com. Designed “with love and fear” by Mike Bodge, Brian Moore, and Isaac Blankensmith, the website is programmed to recognise when you’re touching your face and tell you to knock it off.
Step one is to record a video of yourself without touching your face. Sure, can do.
Step two is to basically rub your (clean) hands all over your face while it films you and works out what you look like as you touch your face.
Step three is to hit the ‘Ready’ button and then go back to whatever you were doing. If you touch your face, you’ll get this screen, while a robotic sounding voice yells ‘NO’ at you. If you have a different tab up, you’ll get a pop up and the computer will still yell ‘NO’ at you.
I’ve had it on in the background for a while now, and here’s what I’ve learned.
Very quickly I discovered that I touch my face way more than I assumed I did. I got scolded so many times in the first ten minutes that it wasn’t funny. Soon enough though, my brain started to yell ‘NO’ at me before I even went to touch my face, so it clearly works. Yet more proof that I’m just a reincarnation of Pavlov’s dogs.
While this website alone probably won’t stop coronavirus in its tracks, it can’t be a bad thing to take notice of how often we’re rubbing our grimy hands all over our faces after touching our even grimier phones and keyboards. So for the love of everything, stop touching your face.
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