Funnily enough, I was just thinking the exact opposite this morning - how little design thought must go into some things. It was in relation to the poor user experience I'd just had from the toilets at work. As usual, the poorly designed/configured flush splashed water out of the bowl when I flushed, but I've become adept at jumping back in time. The other more pertinent issue is that the cubicle is so small in relation to the door size that I had a struggle to get out without brushing my coat against the wet splashed bowl. On this issue, I was thinking that it was probably caused by someone just buying some standard sized off-the-shelf components that looked roughly right and whacking them together, e.g. 2m board for sides, and 1m door with toilet protruding 80cm from wall, leaving you 20cm between toilet and open door (note that these are example sizes just to make the point - I didn't actually measure anything). In other words, no-one thought how big the cubicle actually needed to be. I guess there's probably some correlation between design input and cost, i.e. its probably just not worth anyone spending too much time thinking about that sort of thing.
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I often find bathrooms that were around before ADA [0], and have since been retrofitted, have the worst designs. That's why I try to use the handy-capable stalls, or "suites" as I call them, whenever I have a chance.
Most newer bathroom designs seem sane to me, since they were designed with ADA compliance in mind. Except for airport bathrooms for some reason, where you have to cram yourself and your luggage into a stall that's the same size as any other stall outside of the airport.
I agree that the older, retrofitted bathrooms are indeed horrible designs. However, I completely disagree that newer bathroom designs are "sane". I have seen very, very few "sane" public bathrooms; usually they're just in fancy restaurants where they don't use the standard metal partitions, and instead spend a lot of money on real walls and tile and wooden doors.
As far as I'm concerned, any public bathroom where the partitions between stalls have any gap at all (especially about 12 inches as they usually are) are not sane. There is no reason for that gap; it's just creepy.
The gap is for easier mopping.
It also lets people check for feet before prying open the door.
It's also for if you have, er, a "wide stance" like former senator Larry Craig.
It also saves 12 inches of material.
It also is an affront to privacy.
They could save lots more material by just not having any partitions at all. Why don't they just do that?
As for checking for feet, airplanes solved that problem decades ago with door latches that indicate "occupied" when they're closed.