LooGA Project Proposal

6 min readFeb 2, 2016

So imagine…

Scenario A:

You are on campus and the Barberitos you just demolished at the student center just hit you. You’re poop-shy and the idea of facing the 20-person stalls in the SLC is a nightmare. All you want is a quiet, one-stall bathroom where you can relieve in peace. But where to turn?

Scenario B:
You are a transgender student on a side of campus you have never been to before, you’ve just had your morning cup of coffee and the need to pee is real. You’d love a single stall restroom as to avoid any conflict, but don’t know where the closest one is located and the pressure is building in your bladder…

Scenario C:

You are at Sanford Stadium introducing your baby to her first UGA football game, but even the cheers of the crowd don’t cover her cries as she is hungry for lunch. You need to quickly make your way to a clean, quiet place to breastfeed, but since it’s been several years since undergrad, you have no clue where to find one.

The Problem:

Currently, transgender individuals are not able to rely on gender-specific restrooms when in need of a place to release. Even if the university manages to create unisex restrooms, nobody has time to find them once an individual “needs to go.” The ability to map out where the unisex restrooms are on our obscenely-large campus would prevent restroom related accidents and more importantly ruined pants.

That being said, transgenders are not the only ones who ever need a single-stall bathroom. From breastfeeding mothers to shy students — a universal, one person bathroom is a necessity for many people and with such a large school, those can be hard to find.

The Solution:

We plan on building a fully-functioning iOS app that acts as a GPS locator for these single stall/ any sex restrooms at UGA.

Our clients and partners: the LGBT division of Student Affairs, graduate students at the College of Education and the Office of Equal Opportunity.

The LGBT Division of Student Affairs came to NMI with this problem that they noticed on campus
They are also working with Student Affairs graduate students to map out these locations on campus, to identify potential new locations, and to develop educational material for such places.
The Office of Equal Opportunity is the legal force helping these groups identify and solve this need on campus.

Our vision for the app: an open-source platform that GPS locates you when you open it to point you to the nearest restroom, including the building with the hours, security and whether or not it is ADA accessible. Users can continually update the app as UGA starts to build new single-stall restrooms by simply taking a picture (with their location services on) and sending it to

LooGA on our app or website. Our technology will take the longitudinal and latitudinal points from the photo and store the data. We want our app/website to be more than just a map application, we want it to be a dimensional and dynamic app that is both informational and educational.

Research:

NYU-LGBT Bathroom Locator Website and App

NYU recently put together a website, pdf, and phone app that helps transgender and gender nonconforming individuals to locate bathrooms on campus. This is serving as a baseline guide and inspiration for our own website/app.

Refuge Bathroom App

Recently, a transgender woman developed an innovative, open-source application and website in which anyone can upload a bathroom that they feel is “transgender safe” or not prone to violence/harassment.

While we aren’t dealing with multi-stall bathrooms on campus, we liked the idea of users being able to submit new information to keep the app up-to-date.

The Plan:

LooGA is not exclusively for transgender, intersex or gender nonconforming individuals, simply because everyone on campus needs access to a private space sometimes. Because we are targeting numerous groups, we want to develop a technology that can be marketed in a variety of ways. Rather than just focusing on the technology part, we believe that the overall project needs to create the idea that, “You have a choice of bathroom.”

To begin, we have set up meetings with all of our partners for the projects, since we are using their information to build our app. A big hurdle will be getting that information in a timely manner, since the graduate students have until the end of the semester for their project (that we are depending on.) After getting some base info on locations, times, and other information we will start by building a website that serves as a more basic, google map type application.

After this step, we want to begin working on the iOS version, where we will add features such as a GPS locator and educational information. We will test this beta with our partners, students, and other groups such as professors. After receiving feedback, we will refine our technology and start developing a marketing tactic.

Schedule:

Feb 1 — Feb 14 Continue to gather needed information and research. Design wireframe.

Feb 15 — Mar 1 Build website and begin to develop iOS.

March 18 — April 1 Finish beta and test with different markets.

April 2 — April 15 Refine and develop marketing strategy.

April 16 — May 1 Hammer out details, practice presentation.

Goals:

Reach goal: Develop a open-platform iOS app that is more than a map, but also includes information and engagement opportunity.

Realistic goal: Develop an iOS app that acts as a GPS locator to get user to nearest single stall bathroom.

Base goal: Develop a website that will serve as an easy way for anyone to locate a single stall bathroom on campus near them.

Obstacles:

As a group, we are drowning in toilet-water-deep fear as a result of our lack of coding experience. So as a safety measure, we will do what we know best and start with a website (centered around google maps) and then move to iOS while we work with Dr. Aldridge, as well as to self-teach.

Also, because we have clients to work with, the time constraints resulting from varied schedules between active undergraduate and graduate students can be tricky, but we are already working to overcome these obstacles so we can work together to develop a useful and effective app!