Over the weekend, I came across a project that teaches a little bit of electrical engineering through CAPTCHAs – the challenge-response test used across the web to determine that a response is not generated by a computer.
The open source project, call Resisty, is a WordPress plugin that requires a person visiting a blog determine the correct resistor values before they can post a comment (via Make). The plugin draws a random resistor with the four colored bands on the body which encode the resistance value, the power-of-ten multiplier, and the tolerance accuracy of the resistor. To post their comment, the commentor needs to match colors on sliders to the colors on the resistor, theoretically learning to read resistors over time.
The plugin was created by Adafruit, an open source electronics shop in NYC. As they said, “It would be cool to see more science, engineering, math and puzzle CAPTCHAs, they don’t need all be boring – they can be fun and interesting to the various communities.”
In fact, I think it’s time we start to develop CAPTCHAs for public health. Thanks to Resisty, the possibility of using CAPTCHAs to cleverly deliver health education, teach epidemiology (and biostatistics), or collect public health data is within reach. We could build plugins that perform simple vision or hearing tests, that teach students how to interpret data displayed on graphs, or that evaluate community awareness of a public health message. Even if the resulting implementations are not all industrial strength, they can still be fun and educational, gather useful information, and their character can match the nature and audience of the site.
Adafruit wisely elevated a simple, fractional interaction into something of value, that also underscores their personality and mission. It surprised me and it seemed obvious at the same time. Now I’m convinced there are many other momentary opportunities in daily life to teach, learn and to absorb data for public health goals.
How can you see CAPTCHAs being used in public health? What should we build first?
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