“Thank You toilet bowl, you’re the only one who understands me.”
– Bill Cosby

If creationism is true, then it’s funny to think about how the first human being must have felt when it dawned on him that something inside him was amiss. No doubt, the topic of appropriate places to shit in a place as perfect as Eden was an uncomfortable conversation for even The Lord to have with his brand new human inventions. We can probably assume that even he wondered what humans would do about excrement after they multiplied and filled the earth, a day when hidden bushes would become obsolete. So, The Lord did what many companies do now: He delegated that problem to humans, and, thus, design was born.

The toilet ironically symbolizes the kind of shit that designers face every day when problem solving. The problem of Form and Function is especially sensitive when you consider what a toilet must do, and that, even worse, it has to somehow do it discreetly in a person’s home. Placing this function outside the home, as in the old days, was the lazy way out and simply doesn’t work for a society that demands convenience. We take it for granted now, but the idea of waste control being migrated from outdoors to indoors must have seemed at first absurd and impossible. Consider the challenges: What kind of receptacle should contain that much waste? How will the user remove the waste? What should this receptacle look like? And who will do the repairs and maintenance?

Another key question that always arises with industrial design is “How will the user know how to use it?” It is here that the toilet bowl excels most. It is definitely a user-friendly invention. So much so that it is one of the few inventions that is truly universal; it requires no signs or multi-lingual instructions. I have yet to see a “FLUSH” sign or a red arrow pointing to the flush handle. The user knows what to do and how to do it. He has to. If he didn’t he would have to ask for help, and considering his current time and location, that isn't going to happen. He simply has only one function to do: Flush. The user need not be concerned with the physics and waste management that occurs after the flush. All of that is taken care of somewhere else – for better or worse.

Most design should have it that good. There’s something about the design of toilets that you just can’t get wrong. But I doubt if it is due to the simplicity of having only one function to perform. If that were true, then why is operating a door still so damn confusing for some people? In fact, I still laugh to myself when I recall the sign on a door at a local Burger King that said: “You can have it your way and pull, but this door is known to be pretty stubborn.” Okay, so maybe, which side of the door you’re on means that a door has two functions instead of one. So then what about the “ON” button that people still confuse even though it often has those letters embossed ON the button?

So yeah, usability is a pain in the ass, unless your ass is on the toilet. Then it’s easy. How odd that the toilet would have something to teach us designers. It sits there quietly like a monk, laughing silently because, not only does it know the most important secret of good design, but it has also seen every last single one of us naked.