Seat Seeker

Project Background
While public washrooms are often taken for granted, overlooked or regarded as mundane, for some, access to adequate toilet space is a crucial practical issue on a daily basis. Different users have different requirements in toilets and these may be related to issues of disability, gender, faith and age.
Toilets are therefore multi-functional and complex spaces.

Problem Statement
How might we: Improve accessibility to public washrooms?

The Solution:
A mobile application that assists users search, locate and there by gain access to public washrooms as per their requirement.

Design Process; The design process I followed consisted of 5 stages. Discover, where I conducted secondary research and Interviews; Define: where the research was analysed and further explored through the creation of personas, and defining project goals; Ideate, where Information architecture and sketching helped create the structure and the content; Prototyping consisted of visual design, branding, UI kit creation and wireframing, before building the prototype, and Testing it with users in the final stage. Priority revisions were made based on the Usability test.

This project was recognised by The Royal Society of Arts (UK) Student Design Awards 2019 under the category “Hidden briefs”.

STAGE ONE
Discover

During this stage, I conducted user interviews, a card sorting workshop and studied competitors to gain an understanding of the problem statement.

Research goal
• Identify the target user group for the application.
• Understand the user's pain points, their needs and priorities.

Research Methodologies
1. User interviews to have fluid conversations that include a set of prepared questions to understand the target user group and the difficulties they face.
2. Competitive research includes studying competitor’s in the market and how they approach the problem statement.

User Interview findings
I interviewed and surveyed a wide range of users between the ages of
18–60. I wanted to determine their “pains and gains”, and really understand what difficulties they may face when trying to locate public washrooms.

After conducting user Interviews and validating the design problem, I was able to identify the different kinds of users who have specific needs when it comes to accessibility in toilet spaces, and why it is an important practical issue on a daily basis. These are illustrated below:

Card Sorting
I conducted a card sorting workshop with 15+ users and asked them to rank their preferences when it came to a public washroom. The cards presented to them were: free of cost, cleanliness, size of the stall, sanitary napkins available, sanitary napkin disposal, trash can, stall for disability, mirror, changing station, changing room, shower and gender-inclusive.

A very important insight that was derived from this study:
Each individual had a different ranking. No two users rankings were the same. This validated that different users had different requirements in toilet spaces and my app should accommodate that.

Competitive Analysis
As Tech Innovations is offering a unique solution, I could not study direct competitor’s to the brand. However, looking at other SPAC and Venture capital companies and their websites helped me better understand what kind of information should be made available to the site visitors and users.

Key Findings from Research:
• Different users have different requirements from toilet access and these relate to disability, gender, faith and age.
• The apps that currently exist in the market do not give Importance to these varied requirements, and how each user’s needs are different; users are presented with generic options and not enough information.

STAGE TWO
Define

During this stage, I analysed the research from the competitor analysis and interviews to create a solid persona, which helped me define the project goals and made sure they aligned with the over-all vision for the product.

Persona
I created a persona for “Eliott Grey”, which is based on a few of the users I interviewed who Identified as non binary. I made sure to reflect back on Eliott’s persona from time to time, to make informed design decisions.

Empathy Map
To ensure that the project was headed in a human-centred mindset and to organize my research into a coherent vision, I created an Empathy map to help make Eliott’s personas more realistic.

STAGE THREE
Ideate

During this stage, I started the Project Feature Roadmap. Using this, I moved on to mapping the user journeys and creating the Information architecture.

Project Feature Roadmap
The product feature roadmap helped me prioritise what features would be essential to V1 of the application, and help provides value to the experience.

Task and User Flow
Detailing out the user flow from the task flow helped me create the structure of the app based on my persona’s needs and requirements. It also helped me Identify decision and Interaction points in the journey.

Information Architecture
Detailing out the user journey helped create structure and bring the Information architecture to life. At this stage, I considered various user flows and task flows to design the navigation of the app.

STAGE FOUR
Prototype

This was the stage I was most excited for, to digitize the wireframes, create the visual identity and build the prototype that would be tested with my target user group in the next stage

Branding and Visual Design
Creating the Brand Identity system occurred simultaneously with the UX and later UI design process. Pictured below, are the initial form explorations for the logo followed by the final form, and style guide.

Brand Guidelines and UI Kit
Once the logo form was finalised, the brand guidelines were created along with the UI kit, to ensure standardised design across the app. A shade of purple was chosen as the primary brand colour, as it symbolises empowerment and independence, which I hope this app provides to users.

Wireframes
The wireframing stage was Important to detail out the task and user flows using the elements from the UI kit. Here I attempted 2 main flows: Onboarding and preference ranking, and locating a public toilet to review.

Onboarding and preference ranking flow

Search, locate and review facility

STAGE FIVE
Test

During the testing stage, I performed a usability test where I asked the users to complete 3 tasks:
1. Creating an account and ranking choices
2. Locate and review a location
3. Add a new location to the database

Insights from A/B Test
There were two versions of the bottom navigation designed — one with profile and one with add, which would assist the user in adding a new location to the database. This way previously in the settings tab, but after the usability test, I decided to shift it to the bottom navigation based on the user feedback.

Visual and UI Design
Developing the Visual design for the app was something I really looked forward to. I enjoyed crafting the experience while taking into consideration the feedback from users during testing.

Learnings and Takeaways

• Working on this project opened my eyes to how important it is to make products and experiences accessible to all users.
• This project was later submitted to the Royal Society of Arts Student Design Awards; you can learn more about that here.