Proffessor Jo-Anne Bichard
Jo-Anne is a Professor of Accessible Design, and a design anthropologist with an interest in public sanitation. She completed her PhD ‘Extending Architectural Affordance: The case of the publicly accessible toilet’ at the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL. Jo-Anne has worked in collaboration with many communities researching access and provision of public toilets and sits on the British Standard committees for the revisions of BS6465 (Sanitary Installations) Parts 2 and 3 and BS8300 (Design of an accessible and inclusive built environment. Buildings. Code of practice). She co-developed a toilet audit tool to help assess how the design and provision of toilets might succeed or fail to meet customer needs. Jo-Anne works with Gail at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art where they collaborated on a research project that developed The Great British Public Toilet Map.
Gail Ramster
Gail Ramster (née Knight) is a Senior Research Associate in the Royal College of Art Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. She began the Great British Public Toilet Map when research associate on the TACT3 project, Tackling Ageing Continence through Theory, Tools and Technology (2009-2012). This project ran alongside a second called Robust Accessible Toilets, cumulating in the publication Publicly Accessible Toilets: An Inclusive Design Guide. She has spoken about the project and publicly accessible toilets in general on radio and news articles, as well as presenting her toilet research at events and conferences on a broad range of subjects, such as gerontology, continence management, open data and civic technology. She has an MA(RCA) in Industrial Design Engineering (her dissertation was on... Public Toilets) and she maintains the blog ‘Public Toilets and..’.
Neontribe
Neontribe is a software development company. They are agile and user-centered in their design and development work, producing websites and apps. They have worked on The Great British Public Toilet Map since 2011 and are partners in its future development.
PUBLICATIONS
Jo-Anne & Gail have published numerous articles on public toilets including:
Ramster, G; Greed, C. & Bichard, J. (2018) How Inclusion can exclude: The Case of Public Toilet Provision for Women in Inclusive Design: Towards Social Equity in the Built Environment Vol 44:1 pp. 52-76
Bichard, J. (2015) ‘ExcLOOsion: How sanitary provision is failed by design’ in Korydon Smith, Charles Davis and Beth Tauke (eds) Diversity and Design: Understanding Hidden Consequences. London: Routledge
Bichard, J. & Knight, G. (2012) Improving public services through open data: The Great British Public Toilet Map in Municipal Engineer
Knight, G. & Bichard, J. (2011) Publicly Accessible Toilets: An Inclusive Design Guide. London, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art.
Bichard, J. & Knight, G. (2009) 'Out of Order: How the lack of public lavatories excludes older people from civic participation'. British Society of Gerontology, University of the West of England, Bristol.