Period.
How Can we Design a More Inclusive Period Tracker For Younger users?
For our (Jill Aneri Shah, Madeleine Le, Natalie Chow, Oorja Chowdhary) HCDE 418: Designing for Kids project, we began by discussing what we needed when as young preteens. We quickly realized that very few of us knew what was happening when we got our periods, and it was hard to find resources to assist with this important health issue. Even though period tracking apps are becoming more popular, they weren’t always effective at meeting user needs (UW HCDE Research 2017) and were typically designed for 20-something heterosexual cisgender sexually active women trying to not get pregnant. Since most people get their periods somewhere between the ages of 10 and 14, this means that young preteens don’t necessarily have knowledge, support, or resources available to them, so we decided to build something to make things easier.
Research
First, we needed to determine what our user base desired. Broadly defined as “anyone outside the typical app user,” we interviewed trans males to understand what issues they have with current apps. For example, they liked Clue’s customization capability and gender neutral coloring, but wished the fertile window wasn’t as prevalent, so we built this small guide for them and any other users to turn that feature off as needed. We also led an interview group with 4 girls aged 12-17 to understand what issues they face. Alongside this, we did a competitive analysis of Planned Parenthood’s Spot, Clue, Flo, MagicGirl, and Eve to see what options each of those apps provided.
During that group interview, we endeavored to make the experience as comfortable as possible for the girls. After a minute or two, they very quickly opened up about their feelings and experiences with getting and tracking periods. We then provided markers and construction paper so they could draw and co-design ideas and solutions with us. We had a lot of fun creating and discussing innovative plans to turn into real products and learned a lot from the girls. For example, they came up with the idea for a gamified app called “Princess Panties” where you could fight blood monsters. We never would have found out what their needs are or even thought of gamifying this without them!
Ideation
Armed with lots of information, we consolidated our findings into a set of design criteria. We now knew we should design something simple and straightforward that provides lots of information and is fun. Each of us made 10 sketches based on our findings, which we then discussed until we had narrowed it down to three ideas. A very simple app that only had what was needed, a period tracker with an adorable and peaceful plant growing side game, and my brainchild of a detective themed app. I liked the gamification aspect that the kids came up with, but worried about the theme of “princess panties.” A detective themed app was both more gender neutral while still being fun. The user would be referred to as an Agent and save their emotions with a daily report. The necessary information would be provided using file folders and they could unlock clues to solve a mystery. Over the next few weeks, we tested our prototypes and iterated upon them in order to develop a final app. On the right is one of our low fidelity prototypes ->
Final Prototype
Many design changes were needed in order to make both apps functional and aesthetically pleasing. Since I primarily worked on the Detective app, I’ll mostly talk about the process of making A Bloody Mystery, but I also wanted to share a video of the beautiful app Natalie and Oorja built: Growing Up. We developed both apps as a team and made sure they followed the same structure of being easy to understand and share information. Growing Up appealed to slightly older teens and included gorgeous visual design that added to the light gamification. A Bloody Mystery also did this, but with solving a mystery. However, the color scheme was deemed very dull, so we brightened up the red, made the icons white so they’d pop, and added a dark wood paneling background that fit the theme while being brighter. The entire app is easy to view and navigate through, as you can see here or below.
Goals:
Removes focus from fertility to general period tracking and informing users.
Does not have a focus on certain genders or genitalia.
Light gamification to encourage habit creation of tracking their period.
Makes it easy to log a period, by keeping mood and symptoms simple and having it be the landing screen when opening the app.
Information is presented in a kid-friendly way, broken into small chunks.
I think our team did a phenomenal job of identifying and achieving these goals. We created two apps that are fun, informative, and helpful.
