about

Safe2Pee was a project I created for the Interactives Section of North By Northwestern. It is a guide that helps people within the Northwestern University community find accessible and gender-neutral bathrooms on campus.

Figma

HTML/CSS

Javascript

APIs

my role

Safe2Pee was a solo project, so I designed and developed the guide alone. I did source much of the data from Queer@NU and physically visited bathrooms to verify and expand the data with my co-editor Olivia Lloyd.

problem

As the Northwestern community returned back to campus during the 2021-2022 term, I realized how difficult it was to find gender-neutral restrooms on campus.

solution

With the support of the publication North By Northwestern, my solution was to create a tool to help the community find gender-neutral and ADA-accessible restrooms at Northwestern that included:

• an easy-to-use guide accessible to all members of the Northwestern community
• a visible map that shows all bathrooms on campus
• a function to identify someone's location so they can find the closest gender-neutral bathrooms near them
• and connect the data on the textual list with the map

early ideation

For the design, I focused on visual simplicity. I wanted to make it colorful so that it felt less like an app and created a sense of comfort or fun, to signal to users that this isn't just another site they will come across as they scroll on their computers or phones.

I used the initial page to explain the tool and display the credits to separate it from the tool itself, and to give the user a chance to understand it before trying it out. The second page is separated by a grid that has building locations written in text on the left and a map on the right.

The mobile design was particularly important because I suspected that the tool would be most widely used on the move. Due to the program's simple nature, I could easily fit every feature in the mobile version.

final designs

The final design mostly stayed true to the wireframes. I excluded a search option from the final because it would have been too difficult to code in and it was unnecessary due to the function of the scrollable locations and location finder.

Safe2Pee effectively included the “use my location” button that called on a function built into Javascript that asks for the location of the device being used in order to find the bathrooms closest to the user on the map. The user can then click on the map to discover the bathrooms closest to them.

results

With the help of a fellow North By Northwestern editor who connected us with the disabled students' community on campus, Safe2Pee was able to increase access to bathrooms for all students.