Project Overview
Harpic Loo Locator App ensured safe-access for women in India; Reckitt conceived it, Eleva8e Digital built UX, architecture, and community-driven growth.
Problem + Goal
India has thousands of toilets, but information on location, cleanliness, safety for women, and accessibility barely existed, leaving women without dependable resources for travel or daily use; the goal was a mobile app building a community-powered, safety-first national toilet database.
50,000+
Toilets Mapped
25,000+
Community Ratings Generated
92%
Task Completion Rate (Women-First UX)
12+
Cities Activated
Our Role
Building a impact FMCG product required balancing Reckitt’s commercial objectives with women’s need for safe toilets; Eleva8e designed Loo Locator accordingly.
Media
Harpic leveraged the Loo Locator as a social impact initiative and PR asset, structuring data outputs—maps, milestones, and safety ratings into media-ready stories amplifying sanitation advocacy work.
- Social Impact Media Framing
- CSR Communication Design
- Data Visualisation for PR
Social
Word-of-mouth across women’s communities, including WhatsApp groups, neighbourhood networks, and NGO circles, drove adoption. Built-in sharing mechanics enabled effortless discovery and organic spread within trusted, close-knit networks.
- Community Sharing Mechanics
- WhatsApp-First Distribution Design
- Women's Network Activation
Brand
The Loo Locator sits within Harpic’s brand world while serving users beyond its core market. Its identity is approachable, trustworthy, and purpose-driven without feeling like overt advertising.
- Purpose-Driven App Identity
- FMCG Brand-to-App Translation
- Trustworthy UI Design
Technology
A community-powered database grows through contributions. Backend automatically validate entries, flag anomalies for moderation, and update data in real time, ensuring accuracy as cities and facilities evolve.
- Geo-Database Architecture
- Real-Time Map Integration
- Community Contribution Validation Engine
Design Thinking
We designed for women navigating spaces under time pressure, on slow connections and limited literacy, using large touch targets, minimal text, intuitive icons, and fast contribution flows.
- Inclusive UX Design
- Low-Bandwidth Mobile Optimisation
- Community Contribution Flow Design
The Roadblocks
We faced multiple foundational challenges while building Harpic Loo Locator, from zero data to contribution friction, trust, and connectivity constraints real-world.
Zero Starting Data
No structured toilet database existed; app relied on user data despite cold-start challenge.
Contribution Friction
Simplifying toilet contributions was critical; complex flows or fields caused user drop-offs, thinning database.
Trust and Safety Design
Women needed trusted, accurate, safe toilet data via verified ratings, filters, recency indicators.
Device & Connectivity Diversity
The app needed to work reliably on low-cost Android devices over 2G/3G for women in tier-2 and tier-3 cities needing sanitation information.
Strategy to Impact
If it’s not simple and intuitive, women won’t adopt it—and without adoption, the solution fails, leaving everyone without the intended benefits and impact.
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User Journey Mapping
We mapped three user journeys — the woman searching urgently for a nearby toilet, the regular commuter building personal location knowledge, and the community contributor updating database accuracy for others. Each journey had different UX priorities and time constraints.
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Information Architecture
We structured the app around three core verbs: Locate, Rate, Add. Every screen answered one of those three needs. No navigation complexity, no feature bloat — a purposefully constrained information architecture that made the app usable without a tutorial.
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Wireframing & Prototyping
Prototypes were tested with women from diverse demographics across urban and semi-urban settings — including users with limited prior smartphone experience. Every test surfaced usability gaps that informed the next round of iteration before development began.
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Conversion-Driven UI Design
For the Loo Locator, 'conversion' meant a woman completing a contribution. We designed the contribution flow to be completable in under 60 seconds — with photo-optional, text-minimal input and a single-question safety rating that still generated meaningful, comparable data.
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Responsive Experience Optimization
We built the app specifically for mid-range and low-cost Android devices — optimising map rendering, image compression, and offline capability for 2G and 3G network conditions. The experience on a budget device had to be as useful as on a flagship.
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Design System & Component Library
A consistent component system across all app screens — maps, lists, profile, contribution forms, and rating interfaces — ensured the app felt unified and professional despite its community-built nature. Consistency built trust.
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Usability Testing & Iteration
We conducted usability sessions three cities with 40 women of ages and smartphone familiarity, measuring task completion times, tracking errors, and capturing feedback, ensuring the final design was shaped equally by user insights and the original brief.
Our Approach
Social impact products serve people who never asked for them, so trust demands empathy, field research, and iteration—our Loo Locator approach.
Research & Discovery
We started with field research, visiting spaces across three cities to observe women's sanitation challenges. Insights from women, NGOs, and officials shaped essential data—cleanliness, facilities, distance, verification—defining the app’s features before design.
Strategy & Experience Planning
We built the strategy around one principle: the app must deliver value before the database is complete, using government open data and community contributions to ensure a never-empty map from day one.
UX/UI Design & Prototyping
We co-designed the app with women’s NGO partners, evaluating decisions through a safety lens, testing icons for universal comprehension, validating accessible colours, refining contribution flow with users to finish under 60 seconds.
Development & Optimization
We built a geo-optimised backend enabling consistently accurate ‘nearby’ results within two seconds, even at peak usage, while a moderation layer flagged potentially inaccurate contributions for review before reaching the live database.
Testing & Continuous Improvement
Before the national launch, we conducted a city-level beta with 200 women, gathering structured feedback, tracking city-wise contributions, and identifying data gaps causing frustration, fully resolving all issues prior to scaling successfully.
100,000+
Early
User Interactions
3.5x
Database
Growth via Community
68%
Contribution
Engagement Rate
70%+
Organic
Community Sharing
TESTIMONIAL
Client Success Story
I can't thank the Eleva8e team enough for their outstanding work. They were responsible for building all our e-school services & modules. Their strategic approach and expertise in digital space helped boost our online presence significantly.
SungHwan Kim
(Director & CTO Of Etoos India)
CONCLUSION
Bringing It All Together
The Harpic Loo Locator proves that technology built with real empathy can address gaps left by infrastructure and policy. By creating a community-powered platform centered on women’s safety, Eleva8e Digital and Harpic delivered a solution that serves both as a meaningful brand asset and a true public good. It demonstrates how thoughtful design and purpose-driven innovation can create lasting impact while balancing business objectives with genuine social value.
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