Case study: How to solve a sociocultural patriarchy problem about female sex desires
Designing a digital platform that helps women in a heterosexual relationship to express their desires and fetishes to their partners.
Details
Brief: (a) identify a problem that perhaps you or someone you know is facing every day. (b) build a digital product or service based on your own vision, research, findings and the UX/UI process you’ve learned throughout the program.
Deliverables: UX Strategy, User Research, Interaction Design, Information Architecture and Visual Design
Design Sprint: 10 days.
Team: Ana Luiza Fontana and me.
Project: Taboo, a digital platform that helps women in a heterosexual relationship express their desires and fetishes to their partners.
Tools: Figma, Miro, Optimal Workshop, ZeroHeight, Zoom, Google Meets and old and gold pen and paper.
Discovery
Unfortunately, we (women) still live in a patriarchal era where we face many problems involving power and representation, abuses and suppression of our voice. These problems can be seen even more clearly when it comes to sex relations. Living in the twenty-first century we still face pre-conceptions, judgements, and classifications. Women who talk about their desires are judged as “trivial” and “worthless”. While the ‘good and respectful women’ are quiet and subservient.
All these information doesn’t come from my mind, but from the research me and my teammate ran. We interviewed 5 women, questioned 135 by survey and made a long desk research to dig deep in women and sexuality complexity.
We had some assumptions to start with:
Our convictions were:
- It is difficult for most women to achieve an orgasm.
- Most sex-related content is created for men.
- Orgasms are beneficial to one’s health.
Some assumptions:
- Reaching orgasms empowers women in other areas of life.
- It is easier to reach an orgasm alone (masturbation) than with someone else (sex). Why?
- Women who know their bodies better feel more pleasure.
- There has been a growth in this content niche in the last years (with female P.O.V).
In the first days we gathered a huge amount of data, as can be seen below.
The survey consisted of 21 questions about women’s sexuality, of which 10 were open-ended questions where women could write down their responses:
- Marital status.
- Sexual orientation.
- Level of sexual activity.
- Frequency of sex discourse among friends.
- Frequency of sex discourse with partners.
- Most difficult subject to talk about and why.
- If they had ever had an orgasm.
- Relationship between sex satisfaction and life.
- Masturbation.
- Frequency of masturbation.
- Situations where they orgasm easier.
- Frequency of orgasm during masturbation.
- Frequency of orgasm during sex.
- Libido-influencing factors.
- Orgasm-influencing factors.
- Accessories and sex toys.
- Sex shops.
- Using toys with partner.
And more.
After crossing and analysing the data, we realized that the biggest problem wasn’t what we had previously thought.
We assumed that we would find something like: “women need to discover their bodies and what they like”. But what we came across was even deeper, but not surprising: fear, guilt and low self-esteem.
After reading over and over again, doing affinity diagrams and relating datas, we can say according to our research that:
- The sexual sphere affects other areas of women’s lives.
2. Libido and orgasms are mostly influenced by mental concerns (tranquility x preoccupation, feeling comfortable, feeling beautiful).
3. There are more than 27 variables that influence orgasms.
4. Among heterosexuals, homosexuals and bisexuals, the first group is the one which has the greatest concern when it comes to talk about sex with their partners.
5. The most difficult subject to talk about is “desires and fetishes”, followed by “boundaries and dissatisfactions”.
“women usually say that they don’t like to talk during sex and that the person has to understand because the body speaks, however, our bodies are taught to lie about pleasure, fake orgasm and be passive for “men”. So if we don’t change this relationship and communicate, I think this makes it very difficult.” (Anonymous Interviewee)
“I don’t usually find it difficult to talk about sex, but I never told my husband when the sex was too rough and ended up hurting me” (Anonymous Interviewee)
When questioned, those women said they don’t talk about their desires and fetishes because:
- “I feel like I’m being annoying”
- “Maybe he gets upset”
- “I’m afraid of not being clear and of being judged”
- “I feel shame and guilt”
- “I prioritize his pleasure”
We found some information during desk research that corroborated our greatest problem: heterosexual communication.
- According to research ran in 2018 by Prazerela Institution with 1370 women, only 43% of them openly talk about sex with their partners.
“The vast majority of women never had sex education, or when they did, the focus was always on the negative perspective involving the risks and consequences of the sexual act. It was never taught that women can have pleasure through sexuality, so they still seek to find a physical problem that justifies their inability to feel female pleasure. The path is reversed, all can feel pleasure, the limitation is cultural” (Prazerela, 2018)
Problem Definition
Women who are in romantic relationships with men find it difficult to talk to them about their desires and fantasies because they feel guilt and fear.
Delivery
From these information we started to work on the solution. Firstly to ideate multiple possibilities, to then reduce to the final solution. Here I’m going to showcase some dynamics we used.
We created a question to guide us:
How might we help women in heterosexual relationships to talk about desires and fetishes with their partners?
- We designed a simple user journey to better understand the defined problem:
Using the tool above we could see the user’s pain points and when they occur.
2. We defined our persona: Ana.
- Ana is 25-years-old.
- She is in a relationship with a man.
- She does not feel comfortable talking about her desires with her partner. She is afraid of judgment from her partner for exposing her desires and fetishes.
- She sometimes talks about sex with her female friends.
- Sexual satisfaction puts her in a good mood, relaxes her, reduces stress and anxiety, improves her self-esteem.
- She finds it easier to reach an orgasm by masturbating alone, because she can imagine more things and is not afraid of being judged. She believes masturbation is a personal thing, it doesn’t depend on someone else, so she reaches climax faster.
“I think I’m very stuck when it comes to sexuality! I can talk more with friends than with my partner! And sometimes I even feel bad for feeling pleasure” (Ana’s quote)
3. We invited 3 female designers to brainstorm with us (Brenaibiapina, Luisa Koyama and Nicolly Dario), in sum we were 5 female designers. We only invited women because we wanted to create a solution for women made by women.
The ideas were clustered in some themes, as you can see below:
- Accessible Sexual Therapy
- Sex Games
- Self-esteem
- Safe Space
- Rules and codes
- Sexual Education
- Communication Advice
Using brainstorming insights, we did an affinity diagram, created some user stories and defined our hypothesis:
We believe that by presenting informative content about desires, fetishes and communication with the partner, as well as an all-female group where they can exchange experiences, we will contribute to the gradual normalization of these sexual practices and empower this woman so that she can address this issue with her partner.
We would be able to measure success through satisfaction research and number of members (sign ups).
Benchmarking
We also did some benchmarking to understand the market, but we discovered that the studied apps and platforms (Lover, Share Your Sex, Kindu, Wefeel, Pillow, Peachin, Can’u, OMGYes, Prazerela) do not focus on the issue of conversation about sexuality between women and men. However, many of the platforms inspired us, such as Lover’s and OMGYes’s contents and formats.
Information Architecture
To delimitate the content and understand the flow, we launched a remote card sorting dynamic via Optimal Workshop.
Solutions
We redesigned the user flow and the features many times during the sprint, according to each iteration moment and tests.
Our first idea was a “desires’ Tinder match” model in which the couple could match their desires and break the ice. However, we didn’t include men in our research, thus we couldn’t include a user we “don’t know”.
Facing the complexity of our problem we designed complementary features to solve a cultural problem:
That’s why we designed those three features above and how we believe they will help to solve the problem:
Content about desires and fetishes: developed by and for women, with the intention of normalizing sexual desires and practices, in order to make the user feel more comfortable.
Content about couple communication: also developed by and for women, it brings tips and information about how to approach this subject with your partner in an assertive way, aiming to bring more confidence to the user when she approaches her partner.
Women’s group: a community made up of only of women in which it is possible to share experiences with the intention of not only normalizing female sexuality but also promoting the identification of the user with other women who go through the same problems, showing that she is not alone and that it is something more normal than we imagine.
How would they work in the flow?
Depending on which stage of the user’s journey our persona is passing through, she would be able to choose the feature that better fits her need of communication. Our app would accompany the persona through each step of her problem.
With the Mid-fi prototype we had 5 usability tests, thus we changed:
- The order of information
- Added explanations to the categories
- Changed the layout of information on the long card page
- Changed some steps of the flow in the group feature
- Tested some interactions and changed the type of interaction on Figma.
- Changed the filter icon and its function order to make it clearer
After all iterations tests, we started the hi-fi prototype.
Firstly, we made a design research, looking for colour pallets, typography, running small tests on Figma. Secondly, we surfed on Dribbble, Mobbin, Google Fonts and more in order to find “apps made for women” inspirations, but then we discovered all of them looked and felt the same: pink, purple, animation and bullshit.
We wanted to create an app to normalize women’s sexual desires, so it couldn’t be full of shit…
So we started to look for well-being apps, yoga, and so on, till we find the mood we wanted.
We designed the app icons and the logo. Having all the components, colours, fonts, icons and buttons set, we designed the hi-fi prototype and tested again and again. We used photos from: Pexels, Unsplash and Amaro (vibrators only) websites.
Some iterations:
- Modified the tab bar icons because they were not clear
- Changed the weight of some fonts for better hierarchy
- Added more information about the content of the cards
Now it is your turn to test our prototype and tell us your thoughts:
Check out the video and try to explore all the features on the Figma prototype.
Don’t forget to choose “fit” in the options on the screen below to view the prototype better.
You can also check out the desktop version of the platform below:
Our next steps would be:
- Creating the profile where the user would be able to list their favorite ans saved content.
- Creating a Virtual Assistant that indicates and calls attention to
related content according to the user’s interaction - Increasing the range of content about communication between
the couple
Dear Reader,
Thanks for reading this case study about my last project. Please, share your thoughts with me on the comments below.
See you soon,
Bárbara
