Xixi no Banho – Eu não sei exatamente como começou isto, mas ganhou fama quando artistas da TV divulgaram sua nova forma de consumir menos água.
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Apparently, the Amsterdam airport has a small fly etched into the bottom of the urinal bowl. This in turn encourages men to be more accurate about their aim, and spillage has been reduced to a claimed 80%!

Here’s a link for reference.

At work we have a shared restroom with a few other tenants in the building. No matter how hard maintenance tries, the bathroom is always a mess. Use the restroom in the morning and everything is as it should be. As the day progresses and more people relieve themselves, the level of disgust increases. First it starts out as a 1 ft. radius around the urinal, then it grows to 2ft… Eventually, unless you are completely comfortable standing in someone else’s urine, you’re forced to stand 4 ft. back. Personally, I put up and do as everyone else should… hit the urinal and leave the shoes at the door (at home).

Bottom line… the mess usually starts with one individual. One lazy, sloppy bastard who doesn’t care about the design or experience.

Various urinal designs have been tried – http://www.urinal.net/archive/CoolInstallations.html

The mess will still happen.

There’s a reason that seat covers exist, yet they’re often unused.

Perhaps the problem goes beyond aim. Perhaps it’s a fear of getting close to the toilet – whether men or women, which makes the problem more likely to occur.

For women reading this – please just use the stupid cover and leave the problem to the men.

I am just speaking of the stand-up style. I suspect there are issues for all styles. Which one is best? I dunno.

I ducked into a bar in Spain (Sevilla) and asked for the restroom. I was pointed down a dark hall and found the room; a small closet with a hole in the floor. Doesn’t get more basic than that. And while it smelled bad, the floor around the hole was pretty clean all things considered.

Maybe that’s the best design? :)

But Matt, you’re just speaking about the North American experience. I believe places in Europe and Asia prefer a different type of design for their toilets which I know horrifies many a tourist. Usability-wise, are they any better or worse?

While yeah, this is a bit silly, you do make a great point. It’s like how we’ve had prescription bottles the same way for decades, until Target decided to revise it for safety reasons. Makes me wonder what other designed things we take for granted haven’t been re-looked at merely because we are so used to it.

Probably the first place to start a redesign of the experience would be Women’s restrooms. Solely in that they don’t have urinals and are required to sit.

Like I said in the post, while I was a bit silly in tone I do think it is an area worth attention from a design perspective.

The whole bathroom experience is ripe for redesign. Just from a public health perspective, think about how vulnerable to human “error” the system of a public restroom is. In the US (and pretty much everywhere else where bidets are not common), the way that, ahem, “#2″ is carried out (hands which later touch faucet and door handles come perilously close to a not-so-clean region of the human body) seems like an accident waiting to happen. I wonder what the public health benefits would be to improving the public restroom experience…