What's the most painful thing about going out? Couldn't find a toilet. What's more painful? Everyone had already gone to the toilet, and they didn't know which one to enter. At the beginning of January this year, there was a hot search "The old man couldn't read English and strayed into the women's toilet". The reason is that the mall toilet sign is only in English and not Chinese, and the old man does not know English, so he has to follow the habit of "male left female right", and the result is the wrong toilet. At the end of January, there was a hot search "The woman complained that the public toilet logo in the shopping mall was too brain-burning". This "brain-burning" toilet logo only has a pattern, no text, and the pattern is only composed of a few lines, which is easy to confuse. Netizens also said, "Fortunately, I guessed correctly, otherwise it would have become a **", "I don't have any culture, I can't even go to the toilet", ......Go out happily, how do you have to do multiple choice questions when you go to the toilet? 
How hard can it be to go to the toilet? It's really difficult to know the mark. Doubts about the labeling of public toilets are not new. In a Weibo poll created by @中国经济网 at the end of January this year, the vast majority of netizens encountered confusion and difficulty in identifying gender markings in public restrooms. 
Judging from the complaints of netizens, those toilets with confusing gender identification are roughly as follows. The first one, you draw and I guess. This type of toilet logo usually only has a pattern, and the pattern can be divided into two categories: "minimalist" and "very complex". The "minimalist" pattern does not have much effective information at all, only a few lines, which makes people wonder "can't men and women be written on such a large area". 
The "maximal" pattern is to make people want to break their heads to figure out what information in the pattern is related to the toilet. 
The second is a collection of riddles. In contrast to pure patterns, this type of logo is usually based on text, but it is not an intuitive word for "man and woman". For example, if you are not a fan of costume court dramas, users may not be able to think of what "Qiankun" can have to do with men's and women's toilets for a while. 
The third is a messy stew. From the above types, it becomes a messy stew. For example, the following figure uses the uncommon term "dressing room" to refer to the toilet, or the blue helmet figure to refer to men, coupled with the lack of Chinese "men and women" to clearly distinguish, the unclear ** elements are stewed in a pot, and the users who rush to the toilet are forced to become ants on the hot pot - anxious. 
Of course, there is also a kind of toilet logo, the picture is the picture of the recognition, the word is a familiar word, but it also makes people wonder for a while, which can be called "** each type of do". For example, in the picture below, just looking at the pattern will think that it is a woman wearing a skirt, and only when you combine the text can you know that it refers to a man, and if you meet someone who is in a hurry to go to the toilet or is illiterate, you may run to the wrong toilet. 
In short, so many different toilet signs are confusing, so why are there no uniform regulations? Toilet labeling is not without standardsFrom the perspective of national standards, China issued the standard document of "Public Information Graphic Symbols for Signs Part 1: General Symbols" as early as 2000, and by 2024, this document has been updated five editions. The standard document gives the recommended standards for men's and women's restrooms, as shown in the figure below, that is, the symbol for men's restrooms is a standing man, and the symbol for women's restrooms is a standing woman in a skirt. In the first edition, it was also stipulated that yellow was not allowed without a "warning" and red was not allowed without a "prohibited" meaning, and it was recommended that black graphics and white substrates should be used as the order of color preference. 
gb/t 10001.1-2000 Restroom Graphic Symbols |Source: Reference [3] From the perspective of industry standards, the "Environmental Sanitation Graphic Symbol Standard" (CJJ T125-2021) issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development also stipulates graphic signs such as men's toilets and women's toilets, indicating that the symbol elements of men and women are basically consistent with the national standard documents, and also indicates that when designing graphic symbols, the color of the graphic symbols should be black, and the background color should be white. 
CJJ T125-2021 Provisions on Male and Female Symbolic Elements |Source: References[4] There are also relevant standards at the local level. For example, the Anhui Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the "Guidelines for the Improvement of Urban Blocks in Anhui Province (Trial)", which indicates that the graphic symbols of public toilet signs should comply with the provisions of the "Environmental Sanitation Graphic Symbol Standard" (CJJ T 125). In short, there are standards for the labelling of public toilets from the national to the local level. These graphic symbols are generally very visual and intuitive, and the purpose is to allow the user to quickly understand the meaning it conveys. So why do you still see so many different toilet signs? Because the above-mentioned national standard documents are recommended national standards, they are not mandatory to use. From the perspective of design and application, although the logo should be standardized, systematic and professional, in order to meet the various needs of people, the development of personalization, aesthetics and interest cannot be ignored. That's why we see a variety of toilet signs, and these signs can be roughly divided into three types. The first is a logo designed with the body shape characteristics of both sexes. Designers design according to the differences between men and women's appearance, such as women's long hair and skirts, men's wide shoulders and long pants. 
Gender body characteristics of bathroom logo design |Source: References[5] The second type is a logo designed with the physiological characteristics of both sexes. This type of logo is based on the sexual organs of both sexes, and often needs to balance the boundaries between creativity and vulgarity.
Physiological characteristics of both sexes in the design of toilet signage |Source: Reference [5] The third is designed in a gender-oriented manner. The difference between men and women is not only in physical characteristics, but also in behavior, such as men smoking, women wearing high heels, different toilet movements between men and women, and so on.
Characteristics of the behavior mode of the design of the toilet sign |Source: References[5] However, among so many toilet signs, how do some of them make people look like question marks? How is it inconvenient in a convenient place? The toilet logo is also an icon. As the carrier of information, cognition and interaction are inseparable and important steps in icon operation. From the perspective of cognitive processes, the American cognitive psychologist Donald A. Norman proposed a seven-stage model of action in "Design Psychology", which divides action into three major stages: goal, execution, and evaluation. At the same time, users also face two psychological gaps when using products or services – the execution gap and the evaluation gap. The gap in the execution phase is measured primarily by the user's ability to easily accomplish what they want to do, while the gap in the evaluation phase is measured primarily by the user's ability to easily obtain and interpret the information provided by the system about the operational status. For going to the toilet, it is relatively easy to assess the resolution of the gap, go in and see if it is a men's or women's toilet (of course, be prepared for the risk of going to the wrong toilet). And it is impossible to easily judge whether it is a men's toilet or a women's toilet sign, and even the implementation gap has not been passed. Based on the experience of netizen @ a hairy hair: due to the lack of effective information on the overly minimalist toilet logo, which increased the gap between her implementation of the men's and women's toilets, netizens thought hard in front of the toilet door for a long time, and finally determined that the right side of the picture below is the women's toilet. However, as soon as she entered, she found that there were special facilities for men's toilets, which corresponded to the dissolution of the evaluation gap, and also meant that after a fierce ideological struggle, she may still have misjudged the men's and women's toilets.
Judging from the experience of netizen @媛媛, even if it is the same toilet logo, different subjects may experience different difficulties in distinguishing and face different implementation gaps. According to @媛媛's sharing, when she was waiting for a friend at the door of the toilet in the picture below, she met several people who came to ask which was the men's toilet and which was the women's toilet. This is due to the fact that for groups who do not know English, they can only distinguish the functions of men's and women's toilets by means of patterns, but the overly minimalist patterns lack the information to intuitively distinguish between men's and women's toilets, which increases the implementation gap of this part of the group.
Of course, the toilet sign is too simple and too simple. It is too simple to mobilize the user's existing knowledge and experience; It's too simple and beyond the user's existing knowledge. In the process of interaction between people and toilet signs, the cognitive process starts from the user's search and discovery of toilet signs, and the size, color and position of the icon will affect the search time of the icon. For example, in 2019, researchers from Northeastern University conducted an average judgment time at different factor levels of toilet signs, and the results showed that when the size is larger and the color distinction is more obvious, people's recognition efficiency is higher. So what kind of toilet signs can users quickly identify? First of all, the more familiar the user is with the toilet sign, the less they will realize the existence of the implementation gap, and the easier it will be to judge whether it is a men's or women's toilet. When people are confronted with new knowledge and new situations, the existing experience and knowledge will guide us to quickly recognize and judge the new situation and take timely response actions. And those toilet signs that make people "go to the toilet first" are often beyond the user's existing knowledge. In other words, going to the toilet is not a class, and in general, users don't really need to expand their knowledge from the toilet signage. In addition, toilet labels need to match the user's stereotypes in order to mobilize existing knowledge and experience to make judgments more quickly. The stereotype is a word proposed by Walter Lippmann in 1922 in **. It's not just a negative word, in fact, stereotypes help people build cognitive frameworks and reduce the cost of understanding new things. In other words, the more the toilet logo conforms to the user's stereotype, the more it can reduce the cognitive burden and improve the efficiency of action. For example, usually, women's patterns are mostly red and pink, and men's patterns are mostly black and dark gray; Skirts are worn more often for women, and pants are worn for men. In 2019, researchers from Northeastern University found that the recognition efficiency of distinguishing the colors of men's and women's toilets (blue and pink) was significantly higher than that of non-distinguishing (black, black), and the larger the skirt angle of the women's toilet logo, the faster the recognition speed of the logo. The toilet logo below is either too simple for users to quickly judge men and women based on stereotypes; Either it directly conflicts with the stereotype, and users have to take the time to adjust their existing cognitive models by judging whether they are really "men in red dresses" and "women in blue pants".
Which men's toilet? Which women's restroom? Not only that, but from "minimalist style" to "extremely difficult style", the lack of words is also inseparable. Each person has different interpretations for the same icon, or one person has several different interpretations. In order to achieve the uniqueness of the meaning of the toilet logo, it is necessary to work the pattern and appropriate text to eliminate the ambiguity of the icon, so that the user can quickly focus on the determined range, so that the visual communication of the toilet logo can have a better effect.
Hesitant toilet signs However, the signs should not be purely literal. Compared with words, ** has more advantages in the processing of visual channels, and the expression of meaning is also more direct. In other words, considering that not everyone understands kanji, the toilet pattern logo is a must. Only intuitive and clear pattern logos and text can allow people to quickly determine whether it is a men's or women's toilet, reducing the gap in the execution of cognitive processes. Going to the toilet still makes people brainteaser first? You don't have to.
I don't dare to go to the toilet without any English foundation.