Better Public Toilets

A *really* public toilet!

I'd like to propose some changes to something so fundamental, so part of our every day lives that we often overlook them:  public toilets.  When I say public, I mean any toilet that is used by more than one person regularly (bachelors: there's no improving your apartment's toilet until you break out the Fantastik and get a-scrubbing).  These include toilets in public venues, toilets at work, toilets at school, even toilets at home if you plan on more than your immediate family to use them.


OK, a digression: this topic is certainly not the normal fare when one is attempting to look to the future, but hey -- as the kid's book says, "Everyone poops." Get over it.)


Idea 1: tear away seat covers
Rather than get a seat cover from the dispenser above the toilet, carefully rip it in just the right place, gingerly place on the toilet seat, have it fall in, get another, place it again on the seat, and sit only to find it's askew and you're now doing your business at an angle -- why not just have tear-away seat covers that the next person can simply remove the first layer, sit, drop the kids off at the pool, then flush and away they go.

Idea 2: child seats
I have three children, and currently going through the joy that is potty training with the last one (sighted: promised land!)  But using a public toilet is always a challenge -- a 2-year-old's body is not designed to use a regular adult toilet.  The solution: fold-down child seats.  They normally stay out of the way for adult use, but come in very handy when rushing your child in for a "hurry, Daddy, hurry!" emergency!


Idea 3: self-raising seats
Baby boomers are getting older, and I'm no spring chicken either.  A nice feature to offer those who have trouble getting into sitting position is a self-raising seat.  These spring-loaded bad boys are elevated and as the toilet user goes to sit, the springs ease the fall down to septic level.  When done with your business, a press of a lever unlocks the seat and raises you back up to semi-standing position.  Just talking about it makes me want to get one, though I'm far from needing it!


Idea 4: foot pedal flushing

OK, we all do it anyway by standing on leg precariously, raising the other leg carefully to hit the flush lever at waist level -- why not just put the flush on the floor?  Home versions of this exist, why not create an industrial version that allows the user to simply use their foot to flush?  Germ-free, or at least all the germs on the sole of your shoe.  Just don't go licking it later.


Do you have any ideas or thoughts about how to improve public toilets?

There is no "new" -- only "stuff we haven't tried again in a while."

I have lived long enough at this point to have seen a few things come and go. When it comes to technology, the Internet, gadgets, and the way people interact with these things, there is nothing quite so important to its success as a market and a general public that is ready for it. My own professional past is a story of "right technology, wrong time," but my own recollection of this started even before I began my career; it started for me in college.

When I arrived at the University of Florida my freshman year, I wound up in the honors dormitory. Naturally, when my classmates on the third floor of Weaver Hall were looking for extracurricular activities, they tended towards the geeky and sedentary. My friend Mike and I found ourselves at the computer lab, where we were signing up for accounts on the university computer system. We were lucky enough to be able to choose our usernames, and while he chose a clever homophone of his last name, I drew a blank, and ended up putting down the name of the guy I had just finished hanging a poster of in my dorm room: EINSTEIN. See, I told you it was the honors dorm.

As EINSTEIN on the university VAX/VMS system twenty years ago, we had access to all sorts of utilities and tools that mostly enabled us to communicate and collaborate and sometimes even have fun with each other. Some variant of all those tools are now in the mainstream of technology:

• A program we used called "SEND " was used to message back and forth with someone on the system, very much like the modern-day chat.
• While logged in, you could set your process name to something clever, the modern precursor to setting your status in IM or even tweeting.
• Of course there was email, which surprisingly hasn't changed much in the last 20 years.
• We also had access to UNIX machines, which had a utility called "talk" which looks like an early form of collaborative editing a la Google Docs or Wave.
• A bulletin board system, similar to a common "wall" or "news feed".
• The finger command on UNIX machines allowed you to see who a person was, whether they were online, and what their .plan was, if any.  Facebook and LinkedIn are probably the closest modern-day approximations to this concept.
• Multi-user dungeons or MUDs allowed people to create characters, explore their surroundings, and go on quests.  Sounds to me like World of Warcraft, Second Life, and other MMORPGs.

So then the question I have to ask myself is:  what other things did we do as naive computer science geeks that the online market of today could be ready for?