Managerial Visions: Stories of Upgrading and Maintaining the Public Restroom with IoT

This paper examines the entangled development of governance strategies and networked technologies in the pervasive but under-examined domain of public restrooms. Drawing on a mix of archival materials, participant observation, and interviews within and beyond the city of Seattle, Washington, we look at the motivations of public restroom facilities managers as they introduce (or consider introducing) networked technology in the spaces they administer. Over the course of the research, we found internet of things technologies—or, connected devices imbued with computational capacity—became increasingly tied up with cost-reducing efficiencies and exploitative regulatory techniques. Drawing from this case study, we develop the concept of managerial visions: ways of seeing that structure labor, enforce compliance, and define access to resources. We argue that these ways of seeing prove increasingly critical to HCI research as it attends to computer-mediated collaboration beyond white-collar settings.