Investigating Culturally Responsive Design for Menstrual Tracking and Sharing Practices Among Individuals with Minimal Sexual Education

Literature Title

Investigating Culturally Responsive Design for Menstrual Tracking and Sharing Practices Among Individuals with Minimal Sexual Education

Literature Information

• Field of Study: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and culturally responsive design, menstrual tracking and sharing
• Keywords: menstrual tracking, menstrual health, health equity, culturally responsive design, human-computer interaction

Research Background and Issues

• Problems or Challenges:
  • Current menstrual tracking technologies fail to adequately address the needs of individuals with limited menstrual education.
  • Lack of responsive design for health equity, diverse cultural backgrounds, and sexual minority groups.
  • Significant shortcomings in the sharing and interpretation of menstrual data, making it difficult for users to derive meaningful insights from daily tracking.
• Significance:
  • Menstrual health and education are crucial for improving sexual health and overall women's health.
  • Technology holds great potential in promoting personal health management and reducing health disparities.
• Research Motivation and Related Work:
  • Existing menstrual tracking applications exhibit design flaws, such as inaccurate predictions, lack of contextual data, and insufficient personalized analysis.
  • Current studies primarily focus on gender health and cultural factors in technology but lack exploration of the impact of cultural background and limited sexual education.

Solutions

• Methods and Solutions:
  • The authors employed a mixed-methods approach, including surveys (N=62), semi-structured interviews (N=18), and participatory design (N=7), to analyze menstrual tracking needs and deficiencies.
  • Proposed a "culturally responsive menstrual tracking design" framework centered on cultural background and personalized user needs.
• Innovations:
  • Extended gender health design by identifying design requirements across dimensions such as education, culture, and sexual education background.
  • Emphasized how users customize privacy and data visibility when sharing menstrual tracking information.
  • Conducted in-depth analysis of data visualization, long-term trend interpretation, and usage scenarios outside social environments.
• Implementation Steps:
  • Surveys were used to identify common tracking behaviors and cultural needs.
  • Interviews explored users' potential pain points and cultural differences in tracking and data sharing.
  • Participatory design sessions created prototypes of "ideal menstrual trackers" to reflect users' actual needs and preferences.

Research Findings

• Specific Results:
  1. Identified key attributes lacking in current tracking applications, such as support for different ages, genders, cultural backgrounds, and physical conditions.
  2. Found strong user demand for data analysis and trend visualization features, proposing an "interpretability" design framework.
  3. Determined sensitivity differences in menstrual data sharing across intimate relationships, social, and medical contexts.
• Advantages:
  • Rich survey samples, including cross-cultural coverage in interviews and questionnaires.
  • Provided new insights into menstrual health design at the intersection of cultural background, education, and sexual health knowledge.
• Experimental or Evaluation Results:
  • Over 70% of participants expressed a desire for enhanced symptom tracking and data analysis features.
  • Differentiated design requirements for "professional social data sharing" (e.g., with doctors) and "general social data sharing" (e.g., with friends and family).
  • PD activities led users to propose two "ideal tracker" solutions: smart mirrors and wearable devices, both emphasizing data intuitiveness and privacy protection.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Samples predominantly consisted of young individuals with higher educational backgrounds, lacking comprehensive coverage of lower socioeconomic and educational groups.
  • Limited focus on the relevance and design possibilities of male participation in menstrual-related data.
  • Future research should address the health needs of more diverse racial, gender, and age groups and explore ways to expand educational functionalities.

Conclusion and Recommendations

• Current menstrual tracking designs urgently need to incorporate deeper considerations of cultural and educational backgrounds.
• Future designs should prioritize enhancing the following features:
  1. Provide multidimensional educational content, particularly for individuals from minority cultures or backgrounds.
  2. Emphasize trend tracking and health interpretation of data to help users identify abnormalities.
  3. Explore cross-platform, privacy-protected, and intelligent integration into daily life.
  4. Strengthen design responsiveness to menstrual health inequities, fostering closer collaboration with doctors and nurses.