Stalled
Public restrooms can be an interesting design space. Matters of privacy, crowd control, cleanliness, accessibility, maintainability, and security must all be considered within a very limited space. This results in a lot of interesting products, such as touch-less flush urinals, motion-activated towel dispensers, the airblade, and self-cleaning restrooms, among many others.
I was recently in a public restroom in a relatively new office building. The restroom was fairly spacious, as it was serving a lot of employees. There were about five or six stalls. When I first walked in, I thought they were all occupied, as all of the doors were closed. So, I went back out into the hallway. After observing someone leave the room, I went back in. All of the doors were still closed. I knocked on the door of the last stall and then opened the door. The door fell closed behind me.
Whether by design or by lack of it, the doors on every stall closed of their own accord, making it impossible to know which stalls were occupied. This then leaves the awkwardness of knocking on doors, interrupting people you don’t know in a very private activity.
The doors should at least be balanced so they remain in the position they are left. They could be made to automatically open unless locked. The best stall doors have an occupancy indicator that changes when the door is locked.
