The Toilet Delivery app icon, a T and D monogram, next to the map and search screens of the app

Toilet Delivery: Dignified Restroom Access for NYC Delivery Workers

Role
Product Designer & Front-end
Team
Seren Kim, Feifey Wang
Studio
Hello World, SVA MFA IxD (Fall 2025)
Built with
Figma, Vite, Mapbox, NYC Open Data

Delivery workers spend whole shifts on the road with little access to restrooms. Toilet Delivery is a map-based web app that makes the nearest usable restroom easy to find and easy to enter, so a quick, respectful bio break doesn’t disrupt the route.

Product DesignDesign SystemCivic Tech
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Problem

The city runs on deliveries. Its drivers have nowhere to go.

Delivery and gig workers are on the street all day, but restrooms in New York are scarce, unpredictable and often closed to them. Finding one means stopping, asking, and hoping, on a tight delivery clock.

No predictable option

Restroom access depends on which venue lets you in, so drivers end up negotiating or guessing at every stop.

Time on the clock

Every detour costs deliveries. A bio break has to fit inside the route, not break it.

Dignity

Being turned away, or using a dirty or unsafe restroom, is a daily, quiet indignity of gig work.

Problem statement

Delivery workers lack predictable, dignified access to clean restrooms during their shifts. How might we make the nearest usable option easy to find and easy to enter, without disrupting the route?

Users

Designed for street speed

Who it’s for

  • Delivery and gig workers on bikes, mopeds and in cars
  • Checking the phone in short glances between drops
  • In a hurry, often on unfamiliar blocks

What they need

  • The closest usable option, not every option
  • Whether they can actually get in, before they go
  • Confidence that it’s clean and safe
Map pin icons: a toilet in a blue circle, a fork and knife in an orange circle, and a restroom symbol in a blue circle

Principles

Calm, clear, and human

We set the tone before designing a single screen. Every touchpoint favors legibility over decoration, uses plain language, and aims to be a good citizen in the city: respectful of venues, mindful of neighbors, and focused on what works in the real world.

Calm

Neutral tone and subtle motion. Nothing that adds stress at street speed.

Clear

Legibility over decoration, plain language, and the closest usable option first.

Human

Dignity, predictability and safety; respectful of venues and neighbors.

Accessible

Large tap targets, high contrast and inclusive icons by default.

Solution

Find it, trust it, get in

An Apple-inspired map app built on NYC Open Data’s Public Restrooms dataset. Familiar patterns mean nothing to learn: open it, see what’s near, go.

Map screen centered on the user’s location with nearby pins and a search bar

Map, centered on you

Search sheet with suggestions like a parked truck, saved places, and recents including a nearby toilet

Suggestions, places and recents

Launch animation

01

Map-based browsing

A map centered on NYC with custom restroom pins and a clean, card-based layout with semantic colors.

02

“Around me” discovery

Nearby restrooms based on where you are, closest first, with clear distance and ETA.

03

Restroom detail cards

Venue name and type, access (public, staff-gated), hours and amenity tags like accessibility.

04

Ratings

A quick report on whether a restroom was usable and how clean it felt, building toward reliability scores.

Design System

A brand that feels like infrastructure

Logo

The logo is a clean monogram that fuses T and D into one continuous shape. The top bar suggests a toilet lid and the rounded D forms the bowl, so the first letter of the name becomes a simple, iconic toilet silhouette. The dark blue line feels calm and reliable, associated with safety, trust and professionalism.

App icon, default: a glassy white TD monogram on navyApp icon, dark: a silver TD monogram on deep navy
Logo page: the TD monogram as an app icon, the Toilet Delivery wordmark lockup, and the large monogram

The system follows iOS conventions so it feels native and trustworthy: SF Pro, an 8-pt spacing scale, semantic state colors, and components documented with clear rules.

Color palette: navy primary and bright blue secondary, state colors, text, surface, divider, black and grey scales

Colors

Typography scale in SF Pro: Heading 1 at 56px down to Heading 6 at 20px with line heights

Typography

Iconography rules (20px live area, 2px safe area, 24px full size) and outline and fill icon sets

Iconography

Grid systems for desktop HD, desktop, tablet and mobile with columns, column width and gutters

Grid

Button rules and variants: primary, secondary dark and light, sizes, full-width, destructive, cancel and disabled

Buttons

Text field rules and states: label, placeholder, status, success, warning, error and text area

Text fields

Poster: TD – Restroom for Drivers, a large app icon among map pins, and “Predictable, Dignified Access to Clean Restrooms in NYC. Fast”
Poster: TD – Dignified Access for Delivery Drivers, with a toilet pin and a route line

Loading animation

Build

From Figma to a working prototype

We built the prototype as a single-page web app so it could run on any phone without an install.

01

Figma

Brand, components, flows and motion in one file

02

Vite + JavaScript

A lightweight single-page app

03

Mapbox

Web map, custom pins and routing

04

Vercel

Deployed for testing on real phones

What's next

From open data to a network

This is a studio prototype, and open data only goes so far. The next step is aligning the people who control access, so drivers don’t have to negotiate or guess.

  • Partner venues that explicitly welcome delivery workers
  • Crowdsourced verification from drivers
  • Reliability and cleanliness scores
  • Platform and city partnerships

See next