The UX Design of Public Restrooms

Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Well, as weird as it may be, maybe we should think about it more.

I think nine of ten bathrooms I go in to have at least one major flaw in how they’re designed. And no I’m not talking about aesthetic design… Frankly I don’t care what color the walls are or what patterns are on the floor tiles. I care about the experience of using a bathroom. Namely, the experience of getting in and out of a bathroom having touched as few things as possible.

Designing a modern public restroom.

While I don’t have much formal design experience, I do have a passion for viewing things through the eyes of the user. I’m making up a framework to start the design process and get me thinking about what the goals of a public bathroom are and the constraints and incentives the property owner may have.

Objective:

I won’t go in to why I don’t want to touch things in a public bathroom and I won’t argue with anyone (as if anyone reads this blog lol) over the health reasons behind touching things in a public bathroom. For simplicity, let’s just say our design objective is to design a bathroom which lets users go in and out having touched as few things as possible. “In and out” includes: 1. entering the bathroom 2. doing their business (standing or sitting) 3. washing hands (soap + water) 4. drying hands 5. exiting bathroom.

Constraints:

• Property owner wants to stay behind leading technology (see below point) but ahead of laggards.
• Property owner wants to spend as little money as possible (within reason).
• Property owner has limited space dedicated to bathrooms.

Assumptions:

• Users don’t want to touch things in a bathroom
• Users are more willing to touch something in a bathroom before having washed their hands.
• Users are more willing to touch something at any point in the process if they do not have to touch hand-to-surface (for example, a users will be more willing to touch a surface with a forearm or foot-in-shoe).
• Users want to cover the toilet seat when electing to sit down.

Let’s jump in.

To the design. Not the toilet.

1. Enter the bathroom

To push or to pull the door? Well… space constraint aside, having no doors via a walled entrance would be ideal (think airports). However, space is a constraint and I’m not sure how great the smell from a bathroom would be creeping into the halls without a door.

Well, one thing is for sure. The door can’t be push and pull. Someone would get hurt (especially in tight quarters).

And a lot of factors may influence whether or not the door to walk in to the bathroom would be push or pull.

For now, I’m just going to pick one. I’ll pick the one that will make it harder on us to design at the end of the process (you’ll see why later). I’m going to say we will have a push-to-open door when walking in to the bathroom. So there’s that.

2. Do your business.

I won’t go in to the specifics here (for obvious reasons) but I do want to bring up a couple points. Hands-free urinals should be a given. The idea of touching a surface after handling myself after other men have touched the surface after handling themselves isn’t great. Hands-free it is.

For sit-down toilets, the story is more-or-less the same. I say “more-or-less” because the motion-sensor technology found in so many of today’s automatic toilets is lacking. There are times, sitting down on a toilet, when you want to lean forward or hunch over. This moving away from the motion sensor triggers the flush. And when you’re on the toilet, that isn’t something you want to happen.

But, for now, we’ll assume hands-free/automatic toilets are a given and the problems with motion-sensors are trivial to users.

The next part of this section, for users electing to sit down on the toilet, is covering the seat. While this is a debate in and of itself, I’m also going to assume users do not want their bare ass sitting where some other stranger’s bare ass has been just moments before.

The current seat covers found in many restrooms are complete shit. They’re way too thin and they’re way too hard to use. They have this solid thing in the middle of them… Like what am I supposed to do with that? Am I supposed to tear it out so I’m only left with the toilet seat-shaped cover? Oh… You mean the cover thats usually too small to cover the seat? It’s complete shit. The toilet seat covers in most places are useless. I’d rather just use toilet paper. For this reason, no toilet seat cover dispenser in my bathroom.

Last point: DECENT TOILET PAPER. Because life is too short to use ultra-thin sandpaper. It does no one good.

3. Wash your hands

No need to touch anything here. I want a motion sensor faucet (and not one that you have to recite the alphabet in sign language to get to work… the motion sensor should be pointed where a normal person would put their hands (a couple of inches below the faucet). It should stop dispensing water after 30 seconds of continuous motion sensor-triggering to prevent something from triggering the sensor and constantly running water. Taking more than 30 seconds to wash your hands? No problem. Just remove your hands from the area and hold them back to it again. Another 30 seconds of running water (or until you remove your hands from the area).

While it may seem pretty standard, the sink should also be deep enough to allow the user a comfortable amount of room to move their hands without touching the sink (should out to the bathrooms in the McColl building at UNC Chapel Hill…. worst bathrooms I’ve ever been in and it’s mostly because the distance between the bottom of the sink and the faucet head is about THREE INCHES). The sink is the dirtiest place in a public bathroom. All of the germs, spit, blood, and whatever else people wash off and put into a sink sits there. No one should come close to touching this.

The soap dispenser should be far enough to the left that when the user approaches the faucet to first rinse her hands, the soap dispenser shouldn’t be triggered (this is a waste of soap and may even get soap on the user’s arm or sleeve). When triggered, the soap dispenser should release one squirt of (preferably foam… it’s easier to rinse off) soap.

4. Dry your hands

Now to dry your hands…. This is the part most bathrooms screw up. I’m in favor of paper towels to dry hands. But for this blog post, I’ll cover both paper and paperless drying methods (going green FTW).

For paper towel hand-drying, the dispenser may be motion sensor or pull down to dispense. The important thing here is to have a trashcan both by the paper towel dispenser and by the door (see point (4) below).

For paperless drying, the dryer should be powerful enough to dry the user’s hands within 5–6 seconds (around the same amount of time to dry with paper towels) yet not so loud the folks outside will wonder how a small aircraft carrier got into the restroom. Another shoutout to the bathrooms in the McColl building at UNC Chapel Hill… The Dyson (ooo *design innovation*) hand dryers in your bathrooms are complete shit. The user has to put her hands into the dryer — idea being the user pulls her hands out (up) and the thin and powerful later of air at the top of the machine will dry the water off of the user’s hands (like the air dryer at the end of an automatic car wash). Problem is the dryer starts as soon as it detects the user’s hands (while the user is putting her hands down into the machine) and the air actually pushed the water up the user’s arms… It also is extremely shallow so it’s very easy to mistakenly hit the bottom of the machine where all other user’s hand water has accumulated. Gross.

5. Exit the bathroom

The idea here is to leave the bathroom without touching anything — especially with your hands. You’ve just washed them. Why touch something dirty immediately after?

For paper towel drying, the user can use the paper towel she dried her hands with to open the door. Remember, we’re assuming this is a pull-to-open door upon exit. Should it be a push, this wouldn’t be a problem. Important point: user should be able to toss paper towel in a trashcan beside of the door (when at it’s open position).

For paperless drying, additions should be made to the door to let the user open it without using her hands. A couple of options include: an upside-down handle that lets the user use her forearm to open the door or a foot-opener (an add-on to the bottom of a door) that allows the user to step on the metal piece and swing the door open this way. Both of which require no touch with hands! Bonus points to no touching at all.

So, there it is. A well-designed public restroom that doesn’t cost a fortune.

To recap important points:

1. No toilet cover dispenser necessary — they’re shit. The user can use toilet paper.
2. Decent toilet paper. No cheap thin shit.
3. If automatic toilet, toilet sensors that don’t mistake the user for leaving when she is only hunching over.
4. Faucet sensors that are properly aimed where the user will put her hands (and that actually work).
5. Soap dispensers that don’t suck. Aim sensor where user will put her hands for soap and make sure it won’t get on her arm or sleeve erroneously.
6. Good sink depth. Because touching the bottom of the sink is unacceptable.
7. For paper towel drying, have a trash can by the exit door so users can use the paper towel to grab the handle upon exiting.
8. For paperless drying, have dryers that don’t suck. Have additions to the door exit-side that allow the user to exit without touching door with hands.