Toilets, IoT devices and humans
One part of the IoT (Internet of Things) device sector that’s flush with ideas (yea, pun intended) is the bathroom. From smart mirrors to smart sinks and showers and yes, the toilet itself.
The toilet is interesting because it offers all kinds of diagnostic opportunities for the right device. I wrote about this a few years ago and it was picked up by Wired Magazine. Most any reader of this article has at some time in their life, done a urine sample and quite possibly a stool sample. Yes, a crappy situation indeed and a stinky topic.
Numbers one and two are bodily functions we do most every day, the “throne” is just a part of our home. A device hanging in the toilet bowl could, for example, test for pregnancy in women, sugar levels for diabetics or salt content for those with high blood pressure and perhaps monitor crystals for those prone to that nastiest of painful things our body likes to do to us; kidney stones.
The opportunities and the markets for these devices hold great promise and could be worth billions. I’ve done the research for a few analog firms in this sector that are looking for ways to get in the IoT game and some tech startups who are pure play IoT product focused.
Through a few research projects, we learned some interesting things. Design anthropology is all about, in my area of focus, figuring out how to connect technology with humans. So this was a perfect instance of connecting humans with tech. Most companies do what is natural; focus on solving the problem. What doesn’t often happen is understanding the human aspect of the problem.
In one case with an IoT device for the toilet, the startup was incredibly focused on the diagnostics, the data collected (and what they could do with it) and the app UX for the smartphone it would connect with. Another company was focused more on the features and benefits, adding all kinds of neat features.
Bathrooms are one of the most used rooms in a house and they are highly ritualistic for us humans, just like the kitchen. With bathrooms, people have quirky relationships with toilets, what we do sitting on them, like reading our smartphones (yes, you have, admit it) to the way we start and take a shower, even how we dry off after a bath is different from after a shower. So an IoT device needs to fit in with rituals, including how we clean our bathrooms.
After conducting interviews, spending some time in peoples homes and a netnographic study, we found out some interesting things. As one would imagine, there was the “yuk” factor. People have some interesting habits when it comes to toilets and bathrooms as a whole.
Some insights I can’t reveal due to client confidentiality of course. But what I can say is that aside from the yuck factor, if someone is going to put a device in their toilet it needs to have as little extra parts as possible and the form factor to be essentially singular in nature. What this means is not for example, the sensor connected to a thin wire frame that hooks over the toilet. And the curvier the better. People like curvy things that appear to “hug” the interior better, not wiry frames with boxy parts on either end.
When it comes to visual cues, such as lights, and lights are important, the preferred colours are blue and white. Not red or green. Colours, when it comes to the bathroom are highly specific and have much less wiggle room in a consumer mind than almost any other product.
IoT devices such as mirrors with display functionality, smart light bulbs or air management have a fair bit of leeway in terms of shapes, colours, sizes and placement. Devices for the toilet? Much less so. The one factor we can’t be sure of is whether there really is a market.
Would you want a sensor hanging in your toilet bowl diagnosing things?
Author: Giles Crouch is a design anthropologist and CIO working at the intersection of technology and humans. He helps companies and other organisations design better human experiences for customers and citizens. He works with a lot of startups in the tech sector, from software to IoT to hardware and media companies.
