Userfitness in design: A case study of public toilet facilities

In recent years, more people have been considering the quality of the design of public toilets and the issue of how closely this relates to the quality of the daily lives of residents and tourists (see Note 1). However, the fact is that many so-called modern cities are still not equipped with public toilets of quality that matches their development. Since the late 1990s, studies of public toilet environments and facilities have been conducted in Hong Kong - a densely populated metropolitan city and well-known tourist spot. Taking Hong Kong as a case, this paper argues that, besides through technological advancement, another significant way of ensuring and improving the design quality of facilities (that is, facilities with a high degree of userfitness) is to conduct serious, on-going, and in-depth studies on human-product interactions.