Menstrual health : Design tensions in raising awareness of the impacts of environmental pollution

Abstract: Pollutants can harm menstrual health, and raising awareness of this is vital. This study is a research-through-design project that aims to investigate the design qualities of interactive technologies that aim to raise this kind of awareness. This study used first-person experiment method to design and develop cultural probes. The probes were iterated based on the results of a pilot study. The cultural probes were deployed with five women from Asia and Europe, followed by a semi-structured interview. The probes were designed to prompt participants to reflect on pollution and menstrual health. The results present confusion about pollutants, negative feelings and conflicting feelings while awareness is raising, being watched by technology, lack of more profound knowledge of menstrual health, infringement upon individual bodily autonomy and human responsibility on pollution, and connection between our bodies and environment. This paper highlights the importance of designing and mitigating these design tensions in designing technologies to raise awareness of pollution’s impacts on menstrual health.