Thought: Bathroom design
As I admitted earlier, I am a bit fixated on the generally poor design of bathrooms. The way I see it, there are some basic expectations people have that when met will lead to a positive user experience. Today I am going to touch upon the first basic expectation.
Sanitary
The bathroom needs to not only be clean, but it needs to promote sanitary practice through some smart design decisions. For example, I often see that public bathroom doors have pull handles on the inside of the door. This makes the user pull on the door handle to leave the restroom. I can only speak for men’s rooms, but it is common to see a guy use the bathroom and then proceed to leave without washing his hands. Now I have to touch that handle. This in turn leads to another problem.
Users with the foresight to realize that the handle is not necessarily clean, will take a paper towel to grab it. Often, the wastebasket is not close enough to the door to throw away the paper towel. When this happens, you will inevitably see a small pile of discarded paper towels on the floor near the door.
Here’s another suggestion and thankfully this is not as common a problem, ditch the bar soap. I do not want to touch the same bar of soap that has someone else’s nastiness on it. This goes for peoples’ homes as well. I’m sorry. I may be your friend, but I do not want to share your bar soap with you. Also, please provide a hand towel. I rather not have to wipe my hands on my jeans.
I’m going to leave it at that for now. Otherwise, you gusy will think I’m a bit OCD about things.
1 Comment to Thought: Bathroom design
The most efficient bathroom I ever saw just so happened to be the most cleanly and sustainable. It was quite literally a touch free restroom. The urinals didn’t even flush. There was an oil which was less dense than water and urine so all liquid would simply flow underneath resulting in no need to flush w/ water. The lights were motion sensors. The water, soap dispensers were automatic and the paper towel dispenser didn’t use electricity because it didn’t need any. Most importantly for me, there was no door. Only a zig-zag entry way so people from the outside couldn’t see in. No need to waste extra paper towel opening any doors. Just wash, toss and leave.
And as a side note about the bar soap… I recall from H.S. chemistry class that bar soap is actually more cleanly than a pump soap dispenser. However, this is only in the case that the bar of soap is properly rinsed during the hand washing event. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s what I recall.
October 22, 2008