Interaction Design for Sexual Wellbeing

Experimental Design project during Interaction Design module at IIITDM Jabalpur

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Fields
Design Research
Interaction Design
UX Design

Team
1. Raman Saxena
Mentor
2. Tanishqa Bobde

︎ Since this project was a part of the academic Interaction Design module, the project pathway is biased towards strictly creating an interaction design solution. This enabled understanding the process and principles behind interaction design. In a general context, the research discoveries could lead to a design output which isn’t necessarily an interface design. Please keep this in mind while skimming through. ︎

Process followed:

- Topic selection
- Background research and target audience selection
- Preliminary opportunity statement
- Desk research
- Unstructured interviews
- Creation of Personas, Use Case Scenarios and Task analyses related to the interactions
- Final opportunity statement
- Concept development
- Designing features of the interface
- Creation of Use Cases for the features
- Creation of Task Analysis related to use of the final interface/s
- Designing the UI of the machine
- Branding

Background and topic selection:

I decided to focus on the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 of good health & well being. Under that, the problem area selected was the lack of healthy interaction & engagement between contraceptives & educated urban adults (mainly between the ages of 18-23).

Young adults in Indian urban society rarely practice protected sex despite being educated about the same. This leads to unwanted pregnancies, abortions, sexually transmitted diseases - circumstances that harm the well being of those suffering. Despite availability of contraceptives, the target audience often doesn’t engage with the same, due to various reasons of taboo, laziness, lack of saliency and more.

I also wanted to connect HPV (that causes cervical cancer) to this project. 1/3rd of the global HPV victims are Indian women. This virus is preventable, however urban youth doesn’t know of its implications. It can be prevented through vaccinations and use of contraceptives (specifically condoms). In rural areas, various initiatives are being taken to make people aware about contraception and STD’s. For urban areas, we assume people are educated so initiatives don’t need to be taken. But they do.

Males tend to have a lack of knowledge of the harm that hormonal contraceptives like pills have on the female body. Constant indulgence into the pill can have serious ill effects on the female body, yet lots of urban Indians practice pill use, sometimes even preferred over use of the simplest, safest & most easily available contraceptive: condoms.

Apart from behaving as an effective method of birth control, condoms also prevent direct exchange of bodily fluids & STD’s (HPV too) which other forms of contraceptives do not. This topic is a taboo but a necessity, and I wanted to use the boon of design to tackle this problem. To connect this topic to the subject of interface design, I wanted to come up with an interface that’ll enable frequent, reliable & salient interactions between urban young adults & protected sex (contraceptives + HPV awareness). Not just related to access, but action as well.

This has various opportunities since interventions have not been created as such in this context for this topic. Also, there are various online interfaces - sources & stores but they come with implications of time, availability and access.

Preliminary Opportunity Statement:

How might we enable frequent, reliable & salient interactions between urban youth (18-23 years age) and contraception in order to promote sexual health and well being?

Research:

Primary Research Aim: To identify problems associated with purchase of contraception.
Secondary Research Aim: To identify behaviours associated with sexual health and contraception.

Research Objectives:

To identify the target users
To find out what contraception they’re familiar with
To identify their purchasing habit with contraception
Understand their awareness of STDs and contraception
Identify the behavioural biases associated with contraception purchase
Understand the environment they’ll be the most comfortable in to interact with contraception
Find out why they are behaving that way towards contraception

(click on images to zoom)

Unstructured interview questions:

Samples: 11

Define your age, hobbies & background.
What comes to your mind when you think of the term ‘sexual health’?
What kind of contraception are you familiar with?
Which method do you use the most?
From where do you purchase this contraceptive?
How much do you purchase at one time?
Could you describe to me from start to end how you go about purchasing this contraceptive?
What are the factors that matter most to you while you’re purchasing contraception?
Do you know any unique methods of contraception dispensing?
How do you store contraception? Describe the context?
Have you ever visited a gynecologist?
If no, why?
Do you have any knowledge about STD’s?
Have you ever gotten an STD checkup?
Have you ever had a bad experience with any contraceptive?
What would be your dream environment & method of purchasing contraception? (Think crazy, no constraints!)

Personas and Existing Use Cases:

1) Cautious Kamini

2) To-the-point Tarun

3) Frank Freya

4) Pretentious Pranav

Existing Task Flows:

A vending machine’s task flow was used as a benchmark since the project was leading towards a condom-dispensing interaction design output.

Problems in the existing task flow while using a generic vending machine:

Synthesis:

Final Opportunity Statement:

How might we enable dispensing of condoms discreetly & quickly, eliminating human-human interaction for urban youth (18-23 year olds) in college bathrooms?