Yesterday while visiting my alma mater, I decided to enter a building that was basically my least favorite place on earth during the fall of my freshman year. Motivated partly by nostalgia and partly by nature’s call, I wandered the now renovated halls in search of a bathroom.
Upon finding one and, er, utilizing it, I noticed a sign at eye-level on the back of the stall door. The sign read: “Water-Saving Dual-Function Handle. Pull up to flush #1 (liquid waste) and down to flush #2 (solid waste).”
I instantly appreciated the environmental consideration, the clever form factor and the subtle humor. And being the designer I am, I also asked myself, “Would I have placed this sign here on the stall door or above the toilet on the wall opposite?” I turned around to flush and, there the sign was, again… on the wall opposite.
Bravo! I thought and then proceeded to appreciate the handle and adjacent “cheat sheet.” I appreciated it so much that I got out my iPhone and took a picture.
Then, finally, I flushed. (and inadvertently pressed down on the bright green handle.)
One, I felt like an idiot. After spending all that time thinking about flushing, which is an atypical thought process during an activity I experience several times a day, I failed at doing it right.
Two, I wanted to flush the toilet again, which is in direct opposition to the design’s intent. I wanted to experience an “up flush.” I didn’t, of course, and therefore left the stall (experience-wise) unsatisfied.
Had I the opportunity to visit this bathroom on a regular basis, I’m sure I would adjust my flushing tendencies. I presume, though, that if this were the case, my re-learned behavior would result in unsatisfactory flushes in lesser advanced toilets, which are the majority of toilets I use.
This begs further research, but for now I’ll say this: As interaction/industrial designers, we are often asking our users to re-learn something so that it can be done “smarter” or “better” or “more easily.” Expectation and habit are powerful forces and they need to be reckoned with.
3 Comments
Just curious, how might you redesign this to account for user force of habit?
A good question. My first thought is to have the lesser evil (the lesser water, liquid waste flush) be the default “downward” flush. But I’m still thinking it all through. What would you do?
Two Handles: one large, one small (this is becoming a convention overseas: a big button and a little button).
But an important design constraint here is probably to find a drop-in replacement for the existing fixtures, and that may necessitate the handle design as it is. Given that, I actually like this design, and given the fact that you made the error and it become something you took note of, you might remember differently next time. But, here are some alternatives:
The design could incorporate a forcing function that breaks the habit: the handle can only be moved horizontally. Plenty of people kick these sorts of handles, so that might be okay. I don’t know how the mechanism works, so it might turn out that it has to be moved vertically to work.
Maybe map force to flush volume: press harder, get more water, or map flush count and time. Two successive flushes, means more water.
A more complicated mechanism might result in a very expensive unit, and the people who buy the flush mechanism are stakeholders in the design as well as the toilet users themselves. A cost/benefit analysis might show that the expense of the excess water used by accident does not overshadow the cost of the more expensive flushing mechanism.