Period.
DFA Rice | 2019
DFA Rice Team
Allison Yelvington, Emma Siegal, Magdah Omer, & Riley Holmes
How can we increase accessibility of the menstrual products for menstruating people on Rice’s Campus?
Community Partner: Period
DFA Rice and Baylor College of Medicine partnered with Period. Baylor College of Medicine is a health sciences university that creates knowledge and applies science and discoveries to further education, healthcare and community service locally and globally.
The Challenge at Hand
Finding Targeted Problem Spaces
DFA Rice identified many different opportunity spaces for better access to period products on campus. They found people feel anxious and stressed when on their period, and 1 in 5 students miss school because of their period. At Rice, 30% of students feel they need a long-term solution for access to menstrual products.
Immerse
Site Visit + Interviews
The team immersed themselves into Rice University’s campus to conduct initial research by identifying stakeholders and conducting interviews with menstruating people. They found that regardless of financial need, some people feel it is unfair to have to pay for this necessity. They also found Rice students don’t feel social stigma that would stop them from taking a menstrual product in a time of need, but they do feel stigma against taking multiple products at once. Some users disliked the quality of the tampons they receive from university bathrooms.
Incorporating Community Perspectives
Reframing the Challenge
The interviews helped reframe design goals and measures of success for the project, shifting their core focus to:
How can we facilitate access to a long-term supply of high quality menstrual products to those who need it on Rice’s campus?
Brainstorming Possibilities
Ideating Solutions
Next steps were to ideate solutions to meet the needs and challenges they’ve identified. The ideation process helped them figure out their long-term goal. They want users to feel more comfortable taking as many products as they need from existing resources. For the short term, they implemented a solution that was accessible and intuitive for stakeholder to implement.
Creating for the Challenge
Prototyping Various Solutions
The team split into two project teams to build and prototype their solutions. Their prototypes included menstrual product bundles, a build your own period pack, and various period products to choose from.
Trying it Out
User Testing
After receiving feedback from user testing with various prototypes, the team learned that people want the ability to take what they need and just what they need. Menstruation is highly individual, and so the solutions that took away flexibility for the sake of encouraging taking multiple products at once were not effective.
Reflecting on the Process
Finding Targeted Problem Spaces
When asked about reflecting on the project, the teams said it was difficult to access the “hidden user” that is more financially burdened by access to menstrual products. They are also proud of their team’s ability to reframe more than once.