Throughout history, social and cultural aversions to menstruation have influenced society’s relationships to menstruating bodies.
Scientists are still struggling to understand fairly fundamental questions, including why up to 80 per cent of people who menstruate – by some estimates – experience adverse physical symptoms - like cramps, fatigue and anger - just before the onset of menstruation.
In their quest to bring reproductive freedom to menstruating bodies, scientists figured out how to supplant periods, long before trying to understand why they work the way they do. (Scientific American, May 2019)
Embroiled in politics and patriarchy, the field of reproductive health has seen incremental innovation in over a century. There remains a lack of products and services that truly respond to the experiences and needs of menstruating bodies.
Design Challenge // How might we leverage empathy to drive innovation in women’s sexual and reproductive health?
Client // Self-funded. Open to collaborators, prospective funders & partners.
Role // Project Lead
Project // This project seeks to understand whether reproductive health outcomes can be improved by placing more empathy at the center of how we design solutions for menstruating bodies.
Could a more human-centered approach help tackle an issue that has historically put solutions ahead of understanding menstruating bodies in all their complexity?
This is an ongoing passion project that is currently in the ideation/concept development phase.
I am looking for menstruating collaborators with a background in tech, UX, product and service design to help prototype and move this project forward. If you are interested in working together, please get in touch!
Duration of Engagement // 2019 - Present
Acknowledgements //
Images: Unsplash, Lysol