Toilet Tells - Rediscover Public Toilet Service | Hong Kong

Onebite was commissioned by the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) and the Architectural Services Department (ArchSD), to organise a design thinking programme to seek innovative ideas to improve public toilet design. 

Titled “Toilet Tells: Rediscover Public Toilet”, onebite held events over eight months from November 2020 - June 2021. These include an online preview, eight public workshops, and a workshop session for in-house staff from FEHD and ArchSD. These events were specially planned to engage the general public, professionals, and government officials respectively to achieve the project’s threefold vision of revamping public toilet service, reshaping the user experience of public toilets, and redefining the planning and design process of public toilets

Toilet Tells leveraged on the 4D Design Thinking framework, namely the four stages of Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, to structure the design thinking programme. The framework was developed by the UK Design Council and adopted by the Hong Kong Design Centre, our Programme Advisor for Toilet Tells. 

This approach helped workshop participants to shift from a typical problem-solving mentality towards first building empathy for the needs of different categories of end-users, and thereafter developing the core rationales needed for a holistic and inclusive toilet-going user experience.

Findings from the workshops were distilled into 10 design principles to address the needs and pain points of toilet users, frontline staff, and community stakeholders. These principles formed the basis for our “Toolkit for Human-centred Public Toilet Service Design” and “Road Map for Public Toilet Service Innovation”, which were subsequently provided to government agencies and building professionals to carry out improvement works for public toilets.

Both tools are complementary. The former focuses on a micro, site-specific scale, offering recommendations and action items that bring about immediate enhancements; the latter as a strategy plan for mid- and long-term policy changes.