Inaction as a Design Decision: Reflections on Not Designing Self-Tracking Tools for Menopause

Sarah Homewood

doi:10.1145/3290607.3310430

Inaction as a Design Decision: Reflections on Not Designing Self-Tracking Tools for Menopause

Sarah Homewood

Research output: Conference Article in Proceeding or Book/Report chapter › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

Abstract

This reflective essay documents an attempt to design self-tracking technologies for menopause. This process culminated in the decision to not design. The contribution of this essay is the knowledge produced through reflecting on inaction. From an investigation into current examples, it became clear that applying self-tracking to menopause was fundamentally inappropriate. These technologies were also found to risk resulting in more harm than good; both in essentializing and medicalizing a non-medical process, and in perpetuating notions of the bodily experience of the menopausal transition as a negative experience.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Publication date	18 Apr 2019
Pages	alt17
ISBN (Electronic)	978-1-4503-5971-9
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3310430
Publication status	Published - 18 Apr 2019

Keywords

Menopause
women’s health
reflective HCI
non-design
undesign
menstrual cycles

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10.1145/3290607.3310430

Inaction as a Design DecisionSubmitted manuscript, 228 KB

Cite this

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title = "Inaction as a Design Decision: Reflections on Not Designing Self-Tracking Tools for Menopause",

abstract = "This reflective essay documents an attempt to design self-tracking technologies for menopause. This process culminated in the decision to not design. The contribution of this essay is the knowledge produced through reflecting on inaction. From an investigation into current examples, it became clear that applying self-tracking to menopause was fundamentally inappropriate. These technologies were also found to risk resulting in more harm than good; both in essentializing and medicalizing a non-medical process, and in perpetuating notions of the bodily experience of the menopausal transition as a negative experience.",

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Inaction as a Design Decision: Reflections on Not Designing Self-Tracking Tools for Menopause. / Homewood, Sarah.
Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, 2019. p. alt17.

Research output: Conference Article in Proceeding or Book/Report chapter › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

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KW - women’s health

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Inaction as a Design Decision: Reflections on Not Designing Self-Tracking Tools for Menopause

Abstract

Keywords

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