Find a clean toilet now! (and other ways out of your predicament)

Every now and then you come across a mobile application that actually solves a pressing human need. SUGUSOCO (“right there” in Japanese) solves several at once. Let me give you a worst case scenario:

Say you are a guy on your way to a really crucial date, you’re running short on time, and the sole of your shoe just came off. Also, you obviously just now thought of the fact that you can’t show up without some flowers. You need to pee terribly because you rushed out of home, and all this stress has you desparately longing for a smoke.

Whip out your phone, access the site, locate your position via GPS or map immediately get listings for spots that will help you get out of your predicament right there and right then: publicly accessible toilets (inside department stores and convenience stores), smoking areas (as smoking is banned in many public areas in Japan), flower shops, Mr Minit-type places that will fix your shoe in a couple of minutes, as well as bicyle parking garages (an issue in Tokyo as you risk a parking ticket for leaving your bike in a non-assigned area). While taxi stands would be a good additional category not yet available, at least they list the contact numbers for all taxi companies.

But what makes the service really useful is the additional information they provide for the search results: For example, in the case of the toilets, users are able to check whether heated toilet seats are available (one of many Japanese particularities, but one I definitely miss every time I leave the country), get a cleanliness rating (x out 5 stars), get information on the number of available Western-style vs. squat-style seats and even check out pictures of the toilets. Better still, you can leave virtual toilet graffiti, up to once a day.

Possibilities for adding social web features to the whole thing (“connect with other users who frequent the same toilets as you”) are obvious, but not necessarily desirable. Integration of real time data (“Current waiting time at this toilet/flower shop/taxi stand is x minutes”) would be the more useful feature that immediately comes to mind.

While you will hopefully have noted a generous helping of tongue-in-cheek in this post, I actually do think there are a couple lessons to be taken away from this: For one, this location-based service provides information that is indeed not only useful, but can become very necessary when on the go (as opposed to, say, the often-cited restaurant finder example which overlooks the fact that people do tend to decide in advance where they are going to eat). And secondly, it smartly bundles the solution to different manifestations of the same problem (short on time, not familiar with surroundings, suddenly occuring mishap) in one service.

So what is the business model of this, you ask? We wish we knew! The company behind this, Power Technology, is active in the Web and Mobile Search Engine Optimization field, but that is about all we have been able to find out. But we sure know this thing is useful.

Posted by:Billich | Entry Date: January 29, 2008 6:57 PM