The user experience of menstrual residues on feminine hygiene products

Abstract

Many women experience issues with menstrual residues staying on top of their feminine care products, such as blood clots, lumps or tissue particles. This has not been studied from a user experience perspective. Thereby, this thesis aimed at investigating the user experience of menstrual residues staying on top of sanitary pads and pantyliners, with the hope to enhance it by proposing design solutions. The user experience perspective applied in the project covered the emotional aspects evoked by objects. Desmet and Hekkert’s (2002) model of product emotions was used where the model aided in studying emotional responses to consumer products throughout the project. User research was performed to generate a holistic view of the user experience of menstrual residues. The participants of the user research contributed with insights that led to the identification of several improvement areas. It was palpable that the majority of the users experience menstrual residues on sanitary pads, whereas not on pantyliners. Therefore, the decision was made to only proceed with sanitary pads. The user research resulted in a UX goal to enhance security when experiencing residues on sanitary pads. The UX goal contained three subcategories; control, comfort and awareness. Approaching the subcategories helped in meeting the UX goal. Concepts were generated targeting each of the subcategories which were evaluated. Based on this, a decision to combine several of the concepts was taken. This generated a final concept consisting of three parts; a sanitary pad, a product wrap and an app. The sanitary pad is designed with a recessed middle part with an embossing and a printed pattern. The wrap has printed quotes on the inside of it, lifting women's experiences of menstrual residues. The app provides three main functions; a period tracker, a forum and a library of articles. All three solutions target different subcategories of the UX goal and are therefore ideally used together to complement each other and further enhance security.