Add more data fields to allow assessment of each restroom's safety and privacy

[natts1]

Scope / difficulty

Adding new data fields, which will then require the addition form to be updated accordingly, as well as the restroom view pages and potentially the search results.

Impact

Users can assess whether the restrooms will offer the level of safety that they require or would like, especially useful for vulnerable people, or those more likely to be targeted in attacks due to their gender, race, age, sexuality, appearance etc.

Rationale

A long Twitter conversation with a seemingly transphobic person who objects to trans women having access to female restrooms, led to me discovering this online service, but I was disappointed that the information about the actual facilities and design of each restroom is quite limited.

Proposal

I suggest all of these boolean fields:

• are there sinks within each cubicle/stall
• is there soap or similar within each cubicle/stall
• are there electric dryers within each cubicle/stall
• is there a mirror within each cubicle/stall
• is there a sanitary towel bin within each cubicle/stall
• are the walls and doors of each cubicle/stall free from gaps, slits or holes above, below or in (that someone could look or climb through, or allow them to use a camera from outside of the cubicle/stall)
• are the cubicles/stalls doors directly in a building corridor or common area (as opposed to be hidden away in a separate large room)
• are the restrooms supervised at all

How to actually do this:

I am a web developer without any Ruby experience, but adding, displaying and editing boolean fields shouldn't be that hard to do (or for me to learn)? I'm willing to assist where I can with this (front-end, and feature design).

[cllns]

Most of the bathrooms in Refuge are single rooms, not stalled (at least in areas I've checked). It's a lot of work and code complexity for a minority of cases, which are the less preferable option anyway. Some of these could be useful, but we should also be aware of that adding fields does have a UX cost with making each submission more work and more complicated. It's also quite a bit of development work to display this information well and add filtering.

I'm also unclear about the conversation linked to in the Rationale. I get that conversation was the impetus for you finding Refuge, but I think that experience has affected the proposed new fields. Particularly the suggestion about gaps in the stalls, which seems to cater to the transphobe you were talking with and is reinforcing a harmful narrative.

If we do add fields, we should make sure they're actually helpful for the people who this app is for, not brainstormed by a straight cis "ally" and an anonymous transphobe on Twitter. (To be clear, we are not "on the same team" as them, as you said in the Twitter conversation.)

[DeeDeeG]

I can agree that many of these fields would be not-applicable to most restroom entries we have. And I was also thinking, will people want to enter these? Are we making the form too long? Will there be a real benefit?

Generally speaking, any restroom is better than no restroom. And the restrooms that are added (one can guess) have been added because they are being somewhat recommended by the people adding them.

Anything unusual about a restroom can be mentioned in the description field (which is pretty commonly done so far), and there is additionally a basic rating system. (And there are comments via Disqus, although not many restrooms have comments there, and these aren't available in the mobile apps at the moment...)

I think the quality of the restroom can already be conveyed more or less.