Publication Details

Download

Linda Hirsch, Yanhong Li, Hendrik Geiger, Andreas Butz
Safe-to-Touch: Tracking Touched Areas in Public Transport
In: 18th IFIP TC13 International Conference On Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2021), August 30th-September 3rd (bib)

Risk areas for smear infections in public transport stay generally unnoticeable for passengers. However, touching a handrail can be similar to shaking hands with a thousand people. Although prior research looked into self-cleaning materials to tackle such issues, little has been done to make touched areas more transparent to passengers. In this work-in-progress, we present our idea of ``Safe-to-Touch'', a handrail indicating prior touch points until completed self-cleaning. We prototyped a first interactive version and introduced the idea, including photos of it, in an online survey with 52 participants. Our preliminary results showed that 98.1% of participants would probably change their touch behaviors according to our handrails' indications and would appreciate the increased transparency.