I was interested in somaesthetic design and started reading about the same. Somaesthetic design is designing with the body for the body (Hooks, 2016). Soma design is a way to build body based interactions.
I thought this would be an interesting concept to implement and study. I did a small exercise with 10 women where they illustrate their experiences with menstruation. Here are some responses-
I started analysing this and figured out what menstruators feel before and during. I wanted to explore the concept of co-creation and read an article about developing menstrual technologies by attending closely to the changing social and material experiences of the body, which in turn can challenge the cultural taboos surrounding menstruation. (Campo Woutuk, 2019)
Most menstrual technologies hide away from their actual purpose and force us into believing lesser time with our own bodies while menstruating. Period advertisements also feature a blue liquid instead of red, implying it to be untouchable.
Somaesthetic design in this context would prove be beneficial as menstruators need to be in touch with their own bodies to design with a positive attitude.
I did another small workshop online wherein I asked menstruators to first understand what they need while menstruating and then creating artefacts which would stand out and help people understand menstruation.
These were some of the responses I got:
Analysis
The responses from the workshop showed that menstruators also know the taboo around it but still view menstruation as a positive phenomenon. It shows a need to portray menstruation NOT as a problem, rather as a scientific phenomenon.
References -
Campo Woutuk, N., 2019. Curious Cycles: Feminist Probes for Cultivating Curiosity of the Menstrual Cycle.
Höök, K., Jonsson, M.P., Ståhl, A. and Mercurio, J., 2016, May. Somaesthetic appreciation design. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3131-3142).
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