Lens on Practice: Humanitarian and Packaging Design applied to Sexual Health
My Criteria, in summary, was a well considered User experience; an extensive and iterative development process with a focus on telling a story. A strong input from my target audience (16- 25 year olds) throughout the design process with both a packaging design outcome and an aim to make sexual health more of an open topic.
My first step to user research was creating an anonymous box which I left around the studio for students to write in questions they could have, things they wish they’d known sooner, embarrassing or funny stories they had experienced and things they missed in sex education. This was very successful, students opened up a lot due to it being anonymous, they were also more inclined to come to me and ask about my project therefore talking about the taboo topic.
I began my interviews with students and not to long in I received a quote concerning a student that felt they had no privacy in their own home, with that in mind as I interviewed others I started to question privacy and what they felt they needed to hide, a pattern began to arise.
My interviewing lead me to what people hide in terms of sexual health products, ranging from used contraceptives, to maintenance tools and pregnancy tests.
Unsure where to narrow my design spec I created a survey in which I got 85 responses. This question helped focus my project. I decided to take the top three issues further into research.
However by looking at the processes for all three: Morning after pill, Pregnancy tests and Condoms. I decided to choose the pregnancy test to take further as it had a much longer and richer story with more stressful singular moments and various users taking the test and wanting different outcomes.
I then came across the issue of what my goal should be, I became stuck between making it less taboo or making it more discreet but came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the packagings place to start that conversation. That it should be discreet as it’s up to the user whether they want to share that information with people not the packaging to make that decision for them.
My survey also showed that almost half disposed of the test in public bins rather than at home.
I then started to make up user journeys from my collected research and interviews
I had to make multiple to consider various scenarious of the process. Some women may want the baby, some might not, some might have been trying for years, some it may come as a shock to etc. The second was based younger girl that is too young to be sexually active
For each I considered both results of whether it was positive or negative and the effect that would also have on my user
From my user journeys I started to think about concepts but knew id struggle to get feedback from my users due to it being an awkward topic to discuss. I then came up with an idea to do flawed design, concepts with obvious flaws that would be crazy to go into production, I hypothesised that my discussion groups would have to say something to encourage me to change my idea and would therefore start a discussion about the topic.
This was really successful and enjoyable to do, my goal to encourage people to talk about sexual health was working through this and through the comments from my flawed design concepts I managed to get feedback that became a specification for my real concepts.
I then created concepts from these again going back and forward to my users with ideas getting their opinions
And this is my redesign. So I have scrapped the box entirely leaving only the essentials, there is a sticker on the from of the packaging declaring what it is however the user can then remove the label as an option to keep its discretion, the hygienic sachet now encasing all its contents; a simplified instruction card, a test and a silica gel sachet.
It also would come in a variety of colours and patterns so as not to become distinguishable by its appearance, the idea being that it could be anything once the sticker is removed.
This was my user scenario
Shown above were the products benefits
However what I think the design will do doesn’t really matter, this was thought my users thought. Moving forward with the project I would put it into focus groups to not only get feedback on the concept but also to continue the aim of making sexual health less taboo and listening to my user.
