Functional Design Requirements to Facilitate Menstrual Health Data Exploration

Title of the Paper

Functional Design Requirements to Facilitate Menstrual Health Data Exploration

Bibliographic Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction, Health Informatics, Gendered Health Tracking
• Keywords: Menstrual tracking, health interfaces, health informatics, gendered health, data visualization, multivariate data exploration, physiological data analysis, health app design

Research Background and Issues

• Research Questions and Challenges:

  • Existing menstrual tracking applications are primarily limited to predicting menstrual events and recording symptoms, lacking support for users to comprehensively explore their historical data and reflect on it from multiple dimensions.
  • Users often wish to better understand their menstrual health and its relationship with daily life, using data analysis to guide health management, but lack tools to support this.
  • Current applications fail to integrate various physiological signals (e.g., body temperature, heart rate) with user-reported symptoms, and available visualization methods are insufficient for exploring trends and patterns.

• Significance:

  • Breaking the limitations of traditional menstrual tracking tools by combining menstrual data with other physiological and behavioral signals can help users enhance body self-awareness, guide health decisions, and promote overall health and well-being.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Previous studies have identified users’ goals for menstrual tracking tools (e.g., planning future cycles, exploring symptom patterns, assessing health status), but there is a lack of discussion on functional design requirements to support these goals.
  • Current tools show significant shortcomings in predictive algorithms, cross-application data integration, and visualization capabilities.

Proposed Solution

• Methods/Solutions: The paper proposes five functional design requirements and validates and refines these requirements using two conceptual interface designs (MenstrualMate and PeriodBubble):

  1. Cycle Events and Symptom Prediction: Interfaces should accurately convey predictions of menstrual cycle phases, symptom occurrence times, and events (e.g., menstruation, ovulation).
  2. Support for Multivariate Data: Interfaces should integrate and display multiple signals, such as menstrual event dates, self-reported symptoms, and physiological data.
  3. Single-Signal Inspection: Interfaces should provide detailed views of individual signals at different levels (e.g., raw data, cycle summaries).
  4. Multi-Signal Comparison: Interfaces should present relationships and trends among multiple signals within a cycle.
  5. Cross-Cycle Comparison: Interfaces should enable users to compare signals across different cycles, including historical cycles and those of others.

• Innovations:

  • Systematically proposes and validates design requirements, surpassing the single-function limitations of current menstrual health tracking tools.
  • Uses two entirely different interface designs (linear timeline vs. cyclical timeline) to guide users in reflecting on and discussing best practices for menstrual data exploration.

• Implementation Steps:

  • Phase 1: Recruit 30 menstrual tracking users and conduct surveys to confirm user goals and needs.
  • Phase 2: Design two preliminary interfaces as design probes based on user feedback and related literature.
  • Phase 3: Conduct semi-structured interviews using the design probes, analyze user feedback, and refine design requirements.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  • Validated and refined the five functional design requirements, providing a clear framework for future menstrual tracking interface design.
  • Users expressed a desire to use interactive interfaces to expand their understanding of unknown signals and to differentiate between actionable and relevant signals.
  • Confirmed the importance of timeline representations for users in planning future events and reflecting on historical data.

• Comparative Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Compared to current menstrual tracking tools, the proposed solution supports more complex and multidimensional data exploration (e.g., cross-cycle trends, multivariate signal comparison, and qualitative correlation analysis).
  • Interface design innovations: Combines the advantages of linear and cyclical timelines to meet the dual needs of short-term planning and long-term reflection.
  • Helps users gain deeper insights into the physiological mechanisms behind signals, enhancing their understanding.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • User Feedback: Most users showed strong interest in diverse signals, including traditional self-reported symptoms and physiological data (e.g., body temperature, heart rate). Users tended to use predictive features to manage schedules and prepare for symptoms.
  • Interface Preferences: Users preferred to choose between linear and cyclical timelines based on the context; linear timelines were seen as essential tools for planning and prediction, while cyclical timelines were better suited for reflecting on long-term trends.
  • Textual Explanation Needs: Users expected clear explanations of the physiological mechanisms underlying signal relationships and sought to avoid misleading conclusions about false correlations.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations: The study focused on a young user group not considering pregnancy, excluding more diverse needs (e.g., menopausal or pregnancy-planning users).
  • Future Directions:
    1. Expand the target audience to explore the applicability of design requirements to a broader population.
    2. Deploy the solutions in real-world settings to observe long-term user behavior changes.
    3. Integrate multi-source data (e.g., wearable devices) to enhance signal collection while addressing privacy and data security concerns.