Been to an air plane loo recently? I bet you have. Thought about the flush button in there? Unfortunately, you might have. That's due to it's poor interaction design.
Bathroom User Experiences
Faucets, airplane flush buttons and showers can actually teach us a lot about designing digital products.
Water saving flush buttons
Using the same volume of water for all flushes is wasteful. Perhaps using water at all is too wasteful for the planet. But using a toilet where there is a choice of a small or a big flush is, I imagine, a small step forward. 6 examples of flush buttons.
Faucets for “the disabled” are the best
Over the last 100 years, bathroom and kitchen faucets have become very common. Have you thought about how much they have changed over time?
The alien faucet
I had the pleasure of staying in the UFO at the Thee Hotel over midsummer. Since the room is suspended between three pines there is no running water. Instead, there are shared showers in a separate building. And an incineration toilet in the UFO.
Showers with multiple outlets
Some shower faucets have more then one outlet – one for a shower head and one for filling the bath tub, for example. In these, the water temperature and water flow is set once and a lever is used to switch between the outlets. The design of that switching mechanism can be quite horrid.
Lessons for digital products
Use the human ability to see connections between separate parts of a system. Build products that help us improve the world a bit. Build accessible artefacts. Make the important system states obvious. If your interface needs instructions, you have failed.
Toilet cleaning staff: Let me help you!
Some companies try to understand how satisfied I am with their public toilet. I don't think their method works. A new button can help.