Adaptive Path Blog

This week I’m participating in the annual Bathroom Blogfest, joining up with 22 other bloggers from around the globe write about the importance of bathrooms in the customer experience.

Why bathrooms?

Because bathrooms express cultural and design values loud and clear. Nobody wants a bad bathroom experience (insert shudder here.)

When bathroom design doesn’t support user needs it’s profoundly obvious, and the physical space shows it: trails of water from the sink to the towel dispenser, tiny shreddings of paper on the floor due to a too-aggressive toilet paper dispenser + tissue-thin paper…we’ve all been there.

So this week, I’ll be blogging my thoughts on the women’s bathroom experience, starting with the most private: the home bathroom, and ending with the most public: San Francisco’s public pay restrooms.

Each realm has specifics that are interesting…Here’s my plan of attack:

• The home bathroom as it reflects the private culture of behavior, lifestyle and identity.
• Team spaces (offices, schools) that express the corporate cultures and the values that govern the expectations of people being together for some shared purpose.
• Public-access spaces (retail, restaurant, recreational) that evidence the brand culture, and the expectations companies have of their customer base. More importantly, the experiences customers have and how they impact their brand perception.
• Super-public spaces that demonstrate the wider cultural behaviors…how people go about their business in the country or region, and the controls and affordances designed to balance utility, maintenance and effectiveness.

I’ve got a target list of visits to make, observations to collect and thoughts to share. Stay tuned for more!

Participants in Bathroom Blogfest ‘07

• Kate Rutter-Adaptive Path
• Laurence Helene Borel-Blog Till You Drop
• Iris Shreve Garrott-checking out and checking in
• Susan Abbott-Customer Experience Crossroads
• Maria Palma-Customers Are Always
• Becky Carroll-Customers Rock!
• Toby Bloomberg-Diva Marketing
• Stephanie Weaver-Experienceology
• Linda Tischler-Fast Company Now
• C.B. Whittemore-Flooring the Consumer
• Katie Konrath-Get Fresh Minds
• Ed Pell-K+B DeltaVee
• Helene Blowers-Library Bytes
• Claudia Schiepers-Life and its little pleasures
• Katie Clark-Practical Katie
• Sandra Renshaw-Purple Wren
• Reshma Anand-Qualitative Research
• Marianna Hayes-Results Revolution
• Carolyn Townes-Spirit Women
• Sara Cantor-The Curious Shopper
• Anna Farmery-The Engaging Brand
• Dee McCrorey-The Ultimate Corporate Entrepreneur
• Katia S. Adams-Transcultural

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Bathroom Blogfest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.