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Find the public toilet for you thanks to other users
Year: 2019
My role: UX/UI designer and brand designer
Company: PeePoo was made in collaboration with Konkatena, a start up company trying to break through at the time.
Team: I was lucky to work closely with the conception team and the fullstack developer that would lead the project. During the conception and the design phases I also worked with the person in charge of Legal and Localization, to ensure GDPR compliance and proper localization in Spanish, English and Basque.
Peepoo was an app designed to help users locate the right public toilets based on feedback from other users. Given that one of Konkatena’s main objectives as a company was digital transformation centered on citizen participation, this application was conceived to be grown by the users for the users.
1. Conception: definition of the technical and business requirements.
2. User research : survey and creation of User Personas.
3. Product definition : definition of the user journey and creation of first mock ups.
4. The brand : creation of the logo and icon, and definition of the colors and typography.
5. The solution : design of the application screens.
The first step was to define what the company wanted to offer to its users. As the application growth was thought to be driven by users themselves, the application needed to be reachable for everyone. This set two technical specifications:
Mobile first outdoors use, while also accessible from any device
Accessible from the browser while also downloadable in any OS
The need for user accounts came up during the product definition. In order to safeguard the reliability of ratings, we should limit each user to one rating per place. This would prevent a user from spamming and giving ratings dishonestly, potentially misleading others. This is why we decided to have a simple email-based user access that would verify if a toilet was already rated by a user or not. However, even if a user wasn’t logged in and therefore not allowed to give ratings, they could still view ratings provided by other users.
To offer users the best experience and fulfill their needs, I needed to know them better. As the target user of the application was general, I needed insights from people of all ages and genders. I launched a little survey that gave us some data about users’ habits, needs and pains.
The survey response rate was not as wide as I would have liked it to be. The response rate from people between 46 and 65 years old was very low and it was non-existent from people older than 65. Still, this made me realize who the main users would be, even if the application was open to everybody.
Most of the users admitted to having needed a toilet while out at some point in their lives. They also gave some insight into their preferences for restroom facilities, adding some new characteristics such as space or gender-neutral toilets.
Last question in the survey was an open question about users’ worst experiences in public toilets. Their stories gave us a clear view of what their pains and needs were, and made us empathise more with them, understand them better.
This data allowed me to build 3 user personas that would represent our main users.
This project was not about reinventing the wheel. We wanted the user to have an intuitive and familiar experience. Therefore we decided to look at one of the most used map applications, Google Maps. Taking it as a reference I created the user journey.
After sharing the user journey with the team I created mockups for mobile, as it was a clear mobile-first project (to be used when the user is out). Once the mobile mockups were validated by the company, I also created the desktop ones.
The brand needed to be created. It was easy to fall into the rough, but we wanted to move away from scatological ideas and bring the idea of hygiene and comfort. After creating the name, a cute and friendly representation of the main natural bodily functions, “pee” and “poo”, and focusing on the idea of hygiene and cleanliness, I came to the conclusion of “water”. I designed the logo, a drop representing toilets in a clean and subtle way.
The main colors went hand in hand with the concept of water. White was the perfect supporting color, clean and clear. Blue was the perfect primary color, not only for symbolising water, but also because it represents calm and reliability.
I also defined some support colors such as text color and unique characteristic colors. I selected the typography, opting for Futura PT, a rounded and friendly font suitable for a slightly taboo topic which was supported in both English and Spanish.
Finally, I decided to use the icon as a core UI element: this icon would act as both map markers and the rating indicator, replacing the traditional star ratings.
Mockups validated and brand created, I designed the final screens for the application.
Of course, we needed a responsive application, so I also designed the screens for desktop.
It was time to test if our solution was usable and the experience was satisfactory. For the first developed MVP we conducted a user test. We asked the users to complete 3 tasks:
Search a toilet near you that fulfills your needs.
Rate the toilet you searched.
Rate a new toilet, one which has no ratings yet.
Answers were very positive. The user journey and behaviors in the app were totally intuitive, and no one had issues completing the tasks. More than half of the users also gave us a huge feedback when asking if they could edit their rating for a place. Additionally, some users suggested including handwashing soap between the equipment elements.
The development of the project went smoothly and the application was very well received by users. The team also got some feedback that would allow us to improve the application in a second iteration, which would include the possibility to edit a rating, the soap equipment and a button to share a toilet with someone else via email, Whatsapp, etc.
© 2023 AARDesign. All rights reserved.