I’ve decided to branch my thinking out into a slightly new direction: Design.

I don’t necessarily mean the sort of creative work that my friends Matt and Logan are capable of. Maybe someday. For now, I’m referring more to business design. Way more human interactive experience, way less Adobe Illustrator (theoretically).

So I thought I’d kick things off by talking about toilets.

In case you haven’t pooped any time in the last decade or so, there’s been a fairly significant innovation in the world of public toilets. That little black square on the left side of the pipe is a motion sensor: It can tell when you’ve stood up, and will automatically flush the toilet for you so that you won’t have to physically touch a handle (how outdated!).

Here’s the thing, though: These sensors kind of suck. Most of them can apparently detect the movement of anything bigger than an oxygen particle, and will flush repeatedly throughout the course of one, *ahem*, sitting. I’d guess this is also a waste of water, but as far as I’m really concerned, it’s just a broken experience. And I think it can be easily fixed.

See Figure 2, below:

Here’s the thing with the toilet flush sensor: Its success doesn’t hinge on the fact that it activates the second you stand up from the seat. All we want to do is alleviate the need for you to touch a handle and spread germs. It’s not necessary for the monitor to be fixated on your back while you’re reading a particularly funny Calvin & Hobbes strip or after you’ve consumed more than your fair share of late night Taco Bell. This contrasts starkly with the motion sensor on the sink (which, I believe, was first to market), where the design completely fails unless your hands are directly under the sink when the sensor activates.

All I did above was make two excruciatingly simple changes to the design. First, I rotated the sensor 90 degrees. No more excessive flushes from seat shuffles. All you have to do is hover your hand over the sensor when you’re done. If we were to get really fancy, you might even move the sensor over to the other side of the stall so that patrons don’t have to reach over the toilet. (I don’t know; they’re the germophobes, not me!).

Second, I added a thin red light. Figuring out the three-dimensional depth of where I need to place my hands to line up with the bathroom sink sensors usually works after a few seconds of trial & error. It’s not a terribly big inconvenience, but heck, we’re fixing things anyway. We solve this modern day crisis with the red light, which is much easier to line your hand up with spatially. My guess is that common sinks don’t employ this because they’re usually pointed horizontally and might get in childrens’ eyes. No such problem here.

Anyway. I hope there will be more crap like this to come.