'Lifting the Lid on Bacteria': Designing ambient communications to improve hygiene in primary school toilets

背景：抗菌素耐药性可以通过首先减少感染的传播来直接解决。考虑到使用者的行为，小学厕所是细菌感染传播的一个充满风险的空间。研究报告称，使用学校厕所的孩子中，只有不到一半的人在使用完厕所后洗手。以海报为基础的中性信息，如“现在洗手”或课堂材料，可能有助于理解和加强手卫生信息，但在厕所环境本身中使用更新颖、更吸引人、更友好、更具体的交流方式有什么潜力？目的和目标：这项以交流设计为主导的研究的主要目的是调查在小学厕所环境中使用环境、基于表面的交流来改善手卫生习惯的潜力（降低马桶盖、洗手和烘干）。环境通信涉及到图形和媒体信息在特定环境中的巧妙和意想不到的集成。它通常被商业公司用来提高产品或品牌的参与度，但它在其他领域也有很大的应用潜力。例如，如果细菌和其他适当的信息/图像被巧妙地呈现在环境中，它会对该空间中的行为产生什么影响？这项研究包括三个阶段。首先，将对儿童的细菌和手部卫生的日常表现进行历史回顾。这将提供20世纪关于儿童、卫生和细菌的主流思想的新知识，并提供精选的富有想象力的材料，在随后的讲习班上向儿童展示。其次，学生们将直接参与其中，以评估他们对厕所空间的理解，那里可能有什么细菌，细菌在哪里。参与式设计方法将用于了解孩子们会设计什么以及为什么。第三，根据历史和当代设计实践以及孩子们富有想象力的想法，将开发一套环境设计，用于在学校厕所和Eureka！国家儿童博物馆。设计的安装将有助于测试这一概念，并为评估方法的试点研究提供机会-衡量这种干预措施成功的最有效和可行的方法是什么？应用和好处。这个跨学科的合作研究项目汇集了来自通信设计、医学史、医疗保健、教育和微生物学等领域的学者和专业人士。该项目将涉及综合方法（历史分析、参与式设计方法、沟通设计实践和科学主导的评估方法），因此研究的应用可能会很广泛。它可以让医学和公共卫生历史学家了解历史和当代的意识形态，这些意识形态支撑着针对儿童的细菌表征。它还可以为传播设计师提供广泛的设计和分析，以帮助设计针对当今儿童的抗菌产品/干预措施。这也将使微生物学研究进入一个更公开的领域，因为我们将直接使用微生物学研究的发现（与马桶盖位置有关）作为其中一条信息。所开发的设计不仅可以更广泛地应用于学校厕所，还可以应用于儿童医院或病房。这项研究的一个关键好处是，如果干预成功，可能会减少由学校厕所使用引起的感染传播。仅这一方面的工作就有许多好处：减少缺勤，减少更广泛家庭内感染的发生，并减少对抗生素的需求。这项研究将促进教师和以儿童为中心的博物馆之间关于厕所空间当前和未来潜在交流的讨论。

Context:AMR can be directly tackled by reducing the spread of infection in the first instance. The primary school toilet is a risk-laden space for the spread of bacterial infection given the behaviour of its users. Research reports that fewer than half of the children who use school toilets wash their hands afterwards. Neutral poster-based messages such as 'Now Wash Your Hands' or classroom material may aid understanding and reinforce hand hygiene messages but what is the potential of using more novel, engaging, friendly and site-specific communication in the toilet environment itself?Aims and objectives:The primary aim of this communication design-led research is to investigate the potential of using ambient, surface-based communications in the primary school toilet environment to improve hand hygiene practices (lowering the toilet lid, hand washing and hand drying). Ambient communication involves the clever and unexpected integration of graphics and media messages in specific environments. It is usually employed by commercial companies to improve engagement with a product or brand but it holds much potential for application in other areas. If bacteria and other appropriate message/images were clever represented in the environment, for instance, what impact would it have on behaviour in that space?This research involves three phases. Firstly a historical review of everyday representations of bacteria and hand hygiene aimed at children will be carried out. This will provide new knowledge of dominant ideas from the 20th Century about children, hygiene and bacteria and provide selected imaginative material to show to children in subsequent workshops. Secondly school children will be directly engaged with to gauge their understanding of the toilet space, what bacteria might look like there and where it is. Participatory design methods will be used to understand what children would design and why. Thirdly a set of ambient designs will be developed, informed by historical and contemporary design practice and children's imaginative ideas, for testing in school toilets and the toilets at Eureka! The National Children's Museum. The installation of the designs will facilitate the testing of the concept and provide opportunity for a pilot study of evaluation methods - what are the most effective and feasible ways to measure success of such an intervention?Applications and Benefits.This interdisciplinary, collaborative research project brings together academics and professionals from the areas of communication design, medical history, healthcare, education and microbiology. The project will involve a synthesis of approaches (historical analysis, participatory design methods, communication design practice, and science-led evaluation methods) and thus the application of the research is potentially wide. It can inform medical and public health historians about historical and contemporary ideologies underpinning bacteria representations aimed at children. It can also provide communication designers with an extensive set of designs and analysis to aid the designing of anti-bacterial products/interventions for children today. It will also bring microbiology research into a more public domain since we will use findings directly from microbiology research (related to toilet lid position) for one of the messages. The designs developed may also be applied not only within school toilets more widely but in children's hospitals or wards.One of the key benefits of the research, if the intervention is successful, is potentially reducing the spread of infection due to school toilet usage. There are number of benefits to this aspect of the work alone: reducing absenteeism, reducing the occurrence of infections within the wider family, and reducing the request for antibiotics. The research will promote discussion amongst teachers and child-focused museums about current and potential future communications in the toilet space.