The last few months have seen some further development of the Mapping Microbes project. Firstly, the development of a video tracking application that enables users to record instances, frequency and quality of touch onto video footage, producing quantitative data that researchers can use to, for instance analyse critical control points in a hospital ward setting. We are very grateful to Jacqui Prieto, Sandra Wilks and Mat Moyo for their expertise in how we might want to record touch, to Matthew Olden for some of the app development work, to Tim Leighton and Paul White for their data engineering expertise, and to Pina Gruden for her analysis work. We hope to have some figures to share soon.

We have also been working with Matthew Olden and William Datson, a designer in Bristol, to develop an interactive exhibit based on an automatic hand washing machine. Two machines have been kindly donated by Wallgate Ltd., and can play video and record time, to incentivise users to wash their hands. We showed the prototype at the NAMRIP conference and at Cheltenham Science Festival, in early June, where it went down a storm. We’re looking at ways of developing it further and finding new contexts. Watch this space!