ROBOTICS & TECHNOLOGY


Appierwashrooms


Apps that help people to find and use a public toilet are becoming increasingly common, but what are the other washroom apps available to download? Liam Smith from Tork manufacturer Essity looks into the issue and considers how the phone is becoming an essential companion for anyone visiting – or servicing – a public washroom today.


Using a washroom should be a straightforward experience, but there are now hundreds of apps available designed to facilitate a visit to the public toilet. Most of these help people to locate a clean and accessible facility when they are out and about, but some have other, more specific functions.


For example, the RunPee app gained prominence some years ago in direct response to the launch of the Avengers Endgame film. At just over three hours long, the film was sufficiently lengthy to warrant a toilet break halfway through for many viewers.


The RunPee app, developed in 2009, quickly found its niche. The app sends a vibrating signal to the viewer’s smartphone when a scene with no important plot twists is about to begin. Only those scenes that last three minutes or more are flagged up, signalling to the cinema-goer that this would be a good time to visit the loo.


Downloads of the app soared in 2019 after the Avengers film came out and it’s still going strong. RunPee is constantly being updated with new films, offering between two and four breaks per film and providing a brief synopsis of what the viewer is likely to miss while they are away.


There is also a similar app called After Credits, which lets the user know whether there will be any extra scenes at the end of a film they are viewing. This allows them to decide whether or not to leave the cinema promptly for a washroom break.


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Another novelty app – but with a more serious underlying message – was launched in 2010 to mark World Toilet Day. The Flushtracker app allowed users to track the imaginary route of a flush through the sewerage system. Produced by Unilever in association with the World Toilet Organisation, the app aimed to raise awareness of global sanitation issues and was not expected to gain long-term popularity. So it was short-lived and had limited availability, only being offered in Ireland, the UK, Poland and South Africa.


There are also toilet apps that provide a ‘waterfall feature’ designed to mask washroom sounds. These include Bathroom Privacy, Toilet Silencer and Toilet Shush while the paid version of the Bathroom Scout app also offers this function.


Bathroom Scout has generally been designed to help people locate nearby toilets, listing more than 1.8m facilities worldwide and offering turn-by-turn directions. This is what most people require from a washroom app – directions to the nearest facility, along with some insights as to what they are likely to find when they get there.


For example, the pee.ie app provides a crowdsourced map for the entire island of Ireland and includes details of accessibility and fees. The Toilet Finder app provides information on more than 120,000 public toilets globally and can be used via an Apple Watch.


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