“WE” Speculative Pregnancy Tracking App:Study of Stigmas and Taboos around Pregnancy Experience

This research investigates the norm and dilemmas around pregnancy experience by carrying out Research through Design (RtD) methodology.

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I have selected a few pregnancy tracking applications based on users’ rates and reviews to conduct the critical interface study, which informed the study about how generally pregnant bodies have been perceived in the sociocultural context and how the pregnancy process is being understood in the society, which resulted in that the content related to abortion as a potential part of pregnancy journey is overlooked in these apps. Abortion or terminating the pregnancy is when a pregnant person makes a decision to end the pregnancy either by taking medicine or having surgery.

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Afterward, to gain an understanding of the people’s stories and experiences, I conducted interviews and diary studies with diverse sociocultural backgrounds since the study took the stance of inclusive design, so it was important to include different cultures and gender in the study.

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 Based on the collected data from literature review, critical interface studies, and user studies, I propose the design concept of a mobile app where pregnancy boundaries and segregation between pregnancy and abortion have been troubled. The concept is created in User flow and Low-Fi prototype and then presented in workshop for the potential users from binary and nonbinary group to reflect on it.

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The concept brings to attention that the pregnancy journey differs for everyone, and the facts associated with the pregnancy’s complexity must be carefully comprehended. I critically discussed in my thesis how pregnancy tracking apps are created within the frame of norms.

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I have provided scenarios below resulting from user studies that led the study in the phases: