Some services seem more necessary than others when you are out and about. The mobile lav-locator MizPee is one of them. Peter Olfe, the president of Yojo Mobile, the company behind the service, says several factors make this an important service.

“There is a strong need for MizPee, especially for people with medical needs, parents with babies, and women,” Olfe says. “These are large groups of people who need toilets that have facilities for the disabled, have diaper-changing facilities or just simply are clean.”

The service begun recently in San Francisco, and has now spread to other cities in the US including New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Chicago. In San Francisco there are now 130 locations, while in some cities there may be only 10 available. But more restrooms are being added to MizPee all the time.

“This is user-generated content,” Olfe says. “In many cities we have assigned people who look for toilets and add new ones to the service. And those people usually have a strong need themselves, or have family members who do. We have developed a guide on how to judge restrooms.”

The teams who add new locations to the service can do so either from their mobile phones or from computers. Criteria include cleanliness, the availability of diaper-changing facilities, and ease of use for people with disabilities.

Using the simple service, the subscriber finds the city of choice from a menu, enters the current address and sends it to the service, which then finds and sends details of the nearest location. MizPee does not use GPS (Global Positioning Service) for the moment, but rather a simple search-and-locate solution. The reason is that a connection to GPS would have slowed the start of the whole enterprise by six months, so Olfe opted for the other solution to start with.

"We want to move to GPS as soon as possible, because then you will find what you want with only one touch. Customers want it to be easy, and of course it is easier to get your information with one push of a button. The simpler application, the better it is."

The business model for the service uses location-based advertising, which means its free of charge. Small business such as cafés, bars and shops advertise their presence in banners that appear at the end of the search page. This also allows advertisers to list special offers, such as discounts off certain items at a certain times, or promotions in which the first 20 people to click on the ad get a special offer.

“This is effective advertising for local businesses, and can drive business at little cost. The ads reach the people who are actually in their area,” Olfe says.

There are more plans ahead for MizPee. The first step is to make the application usable via the web, allowing people to add and search for toilets over the internet. It will also eventually develop into a text version, with a shortlist of states, cities and addresses sent by SMS. And of course, new toilets are added all the time – the company also plans to expand outside the US.

But for now, besides saying where to find the most convenient toilet, MizPee also tells you if it is open or not. As Olfe says laughing: “It is important that the service is time-sensitive. You would angry if you had to walk a mile only to find that the restroom is closed.”

Helena Jansson
Editorial Services