You may accuse me of having a potty mind because I keep thinking about user experiences in the bathroom. This post will do nothing to dissuade you from this opinion.
I am a frequent visitor to the Blackwell Hotel and Conference Center as part of the Ohio State Fisher College of Business. This is a world-class facility. Everything is so classy and well done. One of my favorite things is the use of small cloth hand towels in the bathrooms. This is a little luxury that is so much nicer than paper towels.
Of course, they supply paper towels as well for those who desire rubbing their wet hands with tree bark. But recently, they changed from manual paper towel dispensers to motion-activated automatic dispensers. I imagine that these devices were fairly pricey and I just can't see the benefit.
First of all, they have to cost more to run and maintain. They are electric so there are utility costs involved, albeit they are certainly small. I would imagine that maintenance will be an issue in the future as these devices age. I guess that the thinking is that these devices provide better "portion control" for paper towels. My question is "How many paper towels do you have to save to recover the costs of the purchase, the electricity and the maintenance?" A helluva lot I suspect. I have to wonder if they will be upside down on these purchases for longer than the usable life of the device.
OK. So let's say these were installed for the "Gee Whiz" factor. It's a high-tech luxury, right? Well, I wonder if they would think that if they witnessed the number of people who were extremely frustrated with these devices.
You have to wave your hand in front of the sensor to get a single paper towel dispensed. Of course, a single paper towel isn't enough to dry even the smallest hands. My armchair analysis says that most people try to get at least three paper towels. I say "try" because these machines can be very exasperating. You wave your hand once, a little red light comes on and a paper towel is dispensed. If you wave your hand again before the red light goes out, you get nothing. I saw more than one person leave in frustration.
To make matters worse, since you have to wave your wet hands under the sensor, there is a perpetual puddle under the machine. Then, in the ultimate irony, these machines seem to have a mind of their own and often dispense towels in the absence of any stimulus. Thus, a phantom towel is dispensed and because the machine is mounted so low, the phantom towel soaks into the puddle. Invariably, people tear off these wet towels and throw them away - completely wasting them. As you can see by the photo, the basket of cloth towels begins to look very attractive after just a single experience with the automatic towel dispenser of doom.
If this wasnt' enough, I identified another issue in these same restrooms. There is a soap dispenser mounted between two sinks. It is so far away from both sinks that if you wet your hands first before getting soap, you leave a trail of water between the sink and the dispenser. My casual observation is that this order of operations is much more common than perhaps the designers intended. Plus, these dispensers have a propensity to drip and you get a nice, gooey puddle of semi-dried soap under the dispenser. This dispenser is also mounted very low to the counter so more than once, I go an unexpected dollop of goo on the back of my hand as I tried to get soap. Let me tell you, that is a less than pleasant feeling - even though I know that it is just soap. It just feels ooky. Is that a word?
Bottom line? They ought to factor in the increased cost of bathroom maintenance into the costs of these features. To keep these facilities looking tip-top, they have to have someone go in there to clean up many times a day. They have to clean up the towel dispenser puddle and the plop of goo from the soap - probably every time. In between cleanings, I wonder if these minor issues affect users' perceptions of the quality of this facility. Probably not much, but it did raise to the level of awareness for me.
Public service announcement: People will look at you very strangely if you take a camera into the bathroom and take photos of the sink and paper towel dispenser. One gentleman wryly commented, "You know, they sell postcards in the gift shop." [emphasis: my own]
Ha! The joke is on him. There is no gift shop!
Source: I.C.E.
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