Delivery Toilet
— Restroom Access for Delivery Workers
A map-based, end-to-end mobile web application designed to help delivery workers quickly locate usable restroom access with clarity, reliability, and low friction.
My Contribution
Problem Framing: Defined "usable access" as the core design challenge, grounding product decisions in dignity and reliability.
Product Design: Designed the MVP experience and interaction flows for a Mapbox-based web app demo.
System Design: Built a full brand and reusable UI components to support clarity, accessibility, and scale.
What is Toilet Delivery?
Toilet Delivery helps NYC delivery workers find the nearest usable restroom—fast.
Instead of showing every restroom pin, the experience highlights options that are open, realistically accessible, and worth the detour, so workers can take a respectful break without disrupting their route.
The Problem
Delivery workers move on tight schedules, often without reliable access to restrooms.
When the nearest option is locked, "customers-only," or hard to enter quickly, a basic need turns into lost time, stress, and unsafe workarounds. Existing restroom-finding tools rarely reflect what delivery workers actually need at street speed: certainty, fast entry, and confidence that the option is usable right now.
Anonymous Interviewee
"Many pees in bottles my husband used to do. People just would say no and you are delivering in residential estate in teh middle of nowhere."
1) Existing tools only support finding the restroom
Most restroom maps focus on existence, not access. They may list locations, but often miss the details that decide whether a restroom works in a delivery context: entry rules, hours, reliability, and what happens when a location fails.
2) Current solutions for delivery workers
Without a dependable source, workers rely on memory, luck, or negotiation: returning to "safe" spots, buying something just to enter, asking staff, or holding it until the route ends. These workarounds are inconsistent and expensive — especially when every minute affects income and ratings.
Desk Research on current solutions and pain points
For delivery workers, a restroom's usability is shaped less by distance and more by risk and uncertainty. In practice, restrooms fail not because they're far away, but because access is denied, parking is risky, or availability disappears at the moment of need.
Top factors that make a restroom unusable during a delivery shift
Parking / ticket risk and Detour
Denied access (staff says no)
No useable restroom when needed
Confidence reduces wasted time and risk.
Although delivery workers initially describe their problem as "not enough restrooms," deeper research revealed a different issue. Restrooms often exist, but access is unpredictable—denied by staff, unavailable at critical moments, or risky to reach during an active route.
What delivery workers lack isn't location information, but confidence that a restroom will be usable when they arrive.
01 Predictability > proximity
Show options that are reliable, not just nearby.
02 Street-speed clarity
Design for one-handed use, quick scanning, and minimal reading.
03 Low-friction access
Reduce steps, avoid negotiation, and surface entry details before arrival.
Based on these principles, we designed TD to help delivery workers quickly identify the nearest usable restroom with confidence.
Key Features
Responsive Location, Map, and Toilet fetching
Fetching user's current location, displaying all available the toilet options around them. Identify different types of toilet place with icons shown coming with responsive map for user to adjust.
Supporting fast, street-speed navigation.
Using the 'Find nearest' button or select a restroom, TD integrates navigation to guide users there with minimal friction.
"Usable" = fast, reliable, and low-friction.
Restrooms are ranked by real-world usability rather than distance alone. Showing the type of the toilet and rating the quality of the restroom.
Adapting to different ways of moving through the city.
TD supports driving, walking, and cycling, updating routes and guidance accordingly. For each option, the app provides estimated travel time and distance, helping users quickly judge whether a restroom fits their current delivery window.
These features rely on quick recognition and predictable behaviour. To make that possible across the product, I created a unified visual system focused on clarity, accessibility, and consistency.
Design system & Brand
Validation through real-world conversation
TD was presented and tested during Studio Open Day through a live prototype. Across conversations with delivery workers, students, and visitors, the problem resonated immediately. Rather than questioning the need for the product, most feedback focused on how the experience could better support fast, low-stress decisions during active routes.
This response validated our core insight: the challenge isn't finding restrooms, but trusting that access will work when it matters.
Delivery worker, Open Day
"This is actually something I need. I usually just guess and hope it works."
Visitor feedback
"I like that it doesn't show everything, just the ones that actually work."
Supporting Materials
Full Figma File ↗Next step for TD
My Takeaways
Progress comes from identifying clear insight and designing decisively around it. Move forward with informed assumptions, validate quickly, and refine through iteration.
Distinguish between what could be built and what should be built. Clarify the core value of the product. I learned to treat scope as a design decision, not a constraint.
Usability comes from subtraction. Prioritise the top options had a bigger impact than adding more features. Information hierarchy matters more than feature count.