Thursday, February 5, 2015

Bathroom Issues

Recently I was visiting a friend of mine who lives in a dorm on campus, and we started talking about issues that they have with their dorm.  Besides the typical "the rooms are too hot" or "my roommate is the issue", the bathrooms were on the top of the list.  So upon hearing this, I went to the bathroom to investigate what the issues was.  Upon walking in, I noticed right away that the stall door inside the bathroom gets hit by the outside door every time it is opened.  



When looking at the door from the inside, it looks like everything fits just fine and there should be no issue.  However, once the bathroom is actually being used, the issue becomes very apparent and there is definitely a problem with how the bathroom is designed.  The bathroom fits very well and looks very neat, all the stalls fit perfectly and the doors all open.  But when actually being used by individuals (Human Centered Design), we can see that the main goal was left out of the equation when built.  The use of a mental models states that typically you would pull open the door (as the handle suggests), however if the outside door is being open then the error in the design arises. I would consider removing the inside stall if it were to be rebuilt, thus eliminating the usability flaw in the design of the basement bathroom.


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