Employees at a Futurice, a digital innovation consultancy in central Helsinki, Finland, have created an app that shows users which toilets in the building are currently free and which are occupied.
The app – which takes the form of a live map – was created ‘following frustrations that the gents’ toilets were often occupied’, as ‘members of staff often wasted a great deal of time walking around looking for a vacant washroom’.
The bathrooms on the map turn red when they’re occupied and green when they’re unoccupied,” said Futurice director of wizardry and development Paul Houghton. “Then you know where to go.”
The app’s system ‘uses small wireless sensors that are attached to objects and surfaces around the office that broadcast radio signals that can be received and interpreted by a smartphone’.
As well as checking for unoccupied washrooms, the app ‘also allows Futurice staff members who have no permanent workspaces of their own to locate vacant desks and seek out quieter places to work’.
However, the technology has not been welcomed by everyone at the company.
[quote]”I thought it would be interesting to put air-quality sensors in the bathrooms that would sense methane,” shared Mr Houghton. “But I was kicked out of the ladies’ room with my tail between my legs because they told me in no uncertain terms that this is their private space and they didn’t want any spaceship-looking sensors.”[/quote]