Gestural interaction - UX & Technology
I personally have been on a never ending war with one particular service/product. Although I do see how it being contacless can be a lot more hygienic (specially during trying covid times), it just never seems to function when I want to. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: A complaint on sensored toilet flushes.
On paper, the idea behind the experience is pretty natural and straightforward. One feels the need to answer nature’s calls, finds a nice and clean stall, sits, does what they need to do, cleans up, and look at that! No need to touch the yucky flush because as soon as the pants are up, the sensors know that one is no longer sitting down so they must have finished. It then triggers the toilet to flush. Except, it does not always work that way. It actually rarely does. I lost count of how many times I encountered dirty bowls from the previous person because the flush sensors did not go off, or how many times I felt splashes of bowl water on me the second I went in the stall because the sensors thought I was leaving the stall, or how any slight movement caused the sensors to make it flush, regardless if I was done or not.
Just a quick search on automatic toilet flushes gives you several images of users trying to “hack the system” and stop the sensors from flushing before they are finished. It is quite unbelievable how far some people have gone just to prevent them from having such bad user experience when using a toilet!!
(Image above - wet toilet paper is used to stick to the sensor and block it from flushing)
Other types of “different” toilets (different = not the normal hand flush type) that directly pop into my head are the infamous Japanese toilets. Japan is the country which has put a lot of thought and development into their toilets. Multiple buttons and attachments provide the users with all kinds of services for a pleasant experience. Some are even linked to an app, so that they can control all the features from the users’ phones, including the flush.
This gets me thinking, what will be the future of toilets like? It seems, from the awful sensor flushes, that people are trying to modernize it somehow. Is the goal to make the experience completely hands-free? It seems like the least touch or contact, the better. So is a mobile app the way to go? Or could the sensors simply be placed somewhere else, eg. weight sensors on the stool, and that would be enough to change the experience? It is something that requires more thought to be put on it, to idealize better ways of providing a good experience.
Sources:
https://web-japan.org/kidsweb/hitech/toilet/toilet04.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/6yupyc/automatic_toilet_sensors_flushing_on_you/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_Japan


















