Walking Through Normativities of Reproductive Bodies: A Method for Critical Analysis of Tracking Applications

Research output: Conference Article in Proceeding or Book/Report chapterArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Menstruation and fertility tracking applications are of increasing concern in HCI research, as their use becomes more widespread. Methods are needed to understand how such applications become entangled in everyday practices. While these apps promise increased self-knowledge of reproductive potential by collecting intimate data about reproductive bodies, they also restrict the knowledge produced about users’ bodies and embed normative understandings of reproduction and gender. In this paper, we scrutinize the normativities of reproductive bodies by deploying the “walkthrough method” to uncover sociotechnical entanglements of the menstruation and fertility apps Clue, Tilly, and Drip. We discuss how the walkthrough method contributes to HCI's methodological repertoire for studying intimate bodily tracking apps and unpacking their normativities. We offer suggestions for using this method to critically analyze existing apps and extend approaches to design with and for a plurality of in/fertile bodies.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Number of pages15
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Publication date19 Apr 2023
Pages1-15
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-4503-9421-5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Apr 2023

Keywords

  • Menstruation tracking
  • Fertility apps
  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Reproductive health
  • Walkthrough method
  • Sociotechnical entanglements
  • Intimate data collection
  • Normative understandings
  • Reproductive bodies
  • Plurality in design

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