Switching Gears: From Sensing Period Flow to Menstrual Pad Placement
Jessica Baker, Sarayu Dandamudi, Tejas Kakunje, Grace Orlando, Mabelle Pasmooij, Abigail Riesmeyer, Rithika Vedamuthu, and David Wells
The Problem
Working with our community partner, the PROWHD Lab (Program for Research on Women’s Health and Disabilities), we surveyed individuals with a wide range of limited mobility and determined that there is a need to help individuals with limited mobility manage their periods to aid in independent period management.
Initial Approach
To improve menstrual management for people with limited mobility, we initially focused on designing a sensor system to notify a user when their pad was full. This system would have addressed the issue of bleeding through pads expressed in our initial surveys. We planned to use an RFID system to sense the moisture level in the pad, but we ran into trouble because we don’t have anyone with electrical engineering experience on the team and this approach would have been more difficult to prototype and test virtually. This approach was way too complex, and as we struggled to understand the technology, we re-evaluated our solution and decided to shift gears to address the issue of pad placement instead of period sensing.
Current Focus
In the initial survey sent to people with limited mobility, many expressed that placing a pad takes a long time and that they often place the pad improperly. We discussed this issue in a meeting with our main contact from the PROWHD lab, and they stated that being able to control their hands, while also thinking about whether the pad is in the right spot, is the main issue when placing a pad. It takes them twenty minutes to place a pad because of the multitasking and finger dexterity that it requires. We want to design a product that would make placing a pad more efficient by limiting the multitasking and physical coordination needed to place a pad.
We feel that this approach better fits our expertise (Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, general design) and prototypes can be generated quickly. Our team went to work brainstorming different solutions to help with the attachment of pads to underwear.
We then presented these initial ideas at a meeting with our community partner, as shown in Figure 1. After the meeting, we decided to pursue two designs: a hand-loop focused tool and a reusable menstrual pad with installed magnets. We pursued these two designs in groups and presented both at design review two.
Current Design Idea
We have decided to pursue the menstrual pad idea, which includes a reusable pad and underwear mechanism. The primary goal of this design is to streamline the pad application process and cut out the use of adhesives in pad application.
With the reusable menstrual pad design in mind, we needed to create a list of refined design requirements. For this design, it was necessary to consider the exact needs of the user and incorporate them into the proposed design requirements. For the reusable pad, the first design requirement is that it has to be easily washed and dried. It also has to be securely attached when placed on a pair of underwear and must be easily changed when necessary. In terms of change interval, we will design our menstrual product to last for a majority of the day to avoid our community partner from constantly needing to change the product. We also wanted our reusable pad to be portable and discrete. Specifically, we want our design to weigh less than half a pound (roughly the average weight of an iPhone) to allow our community partner to carry the product in a purse or backpack. In addition, we also want to create a product that involves minimal dexterity during menstrual management, as our target market may not have a full range of motion. Therefore, we worked with our community partner to determine that our menstrual product should be easy to use and take less than fifteen minutes to apply. Our menstrual product must also be affordable. We have decided to aim for our menstrual product to be less than $120 per year, which is the amount that the average menstruating individual spends annually on pads and tampons. A one time purchase of reusable menstrual pads (around fifteen pads) is about $35–65 (depends on level of flow and length of period). Menstrual pads pads last for about 5 years, and with our modified pads we are aiming for at least three years, so that would come to a total of $12–22 per year plus the added cost for the magnets added to the pads. The user should have at least one pair of compatible underwear per day of their cycle which can range from 2–7 days. We estimate each pair of underwear will cost $5 plus the cost of the magnet addition. Finally, our menstrual product must be made of environmentally-friendly materials that do not cause irritation when they come in contact with the user’s skin.
For many, the stickiness of the pad makes it very difficult to adjust pad position if the first attempt at placement was unsuccessful. The first step we took in designing this new mechanism was researching pre-existing solutions for individuals with limited hand dexterity. Through this research, we discovered shirts that use magnets in place of buttons. A visual of this solution can be seen in Figure 2. For many individuals, these shirts are very useful because they allow for the “normal” button appearance while using much easier functionalities. Because our team is working towards similar goals, we believed that adding magnets to a pad/underwear mechanism would eliminate the frustrating adhesive application while keeping the integrity of reusable pads.
Once we established the approach we wanted to take, we worked on finding a way to integrate magnets into the design, producing the magnetic pad/underwear mechanism shown below in Figure 3. This new design includes placing magnets in/on the underwear while also having corresponding magnets on a reusable pad. The magnets will likely be color coded to ensure that there is an obvious way to apply the pad. The front and back magnets should easily connect, while the two magnets on the wings need to be folded over to secure pad placement.
In our current prototypes, the design uses adhesive magnets, but these were mainly used for prototyping, as the magnets do not generally have a strong adhesive or a strong magnetic connection. In the future, we optimally hope to find a magnet that is strong enough to create a connection between the pad and underwear while also not losing comfort.
Design Review 2 Feedback
Design Review 2 was very beneficial for our group as we received feedback on our two designs that we had prototyped from our community partners, core MedLaunch members, and another team in MedLaunch. All the feedback was super helpful in deciding that the reusable menstrual pad is the design pathway we should pursue over the hand-loop focused tool.
We learned from our community partner that the hand-loop tool may not be feasible for our specific target audience of people with disabilities such as cerebral palsy and spinal cord injury. The hand loop tool requires a lot of wrist movement, which was pointed out by our community partners to be very difficult because our target audience has very limited wrist movement that would allow for the range of motion needed to utilize the device effectively. We also learned from a core MedLaunch member that this design is more difficult to prototype and build due to the many components of the design, which would lead to more error in our final product.
Additionally, we had gained advantageous feedback on our second design, the reusable magnet pad. Our community partner really enjoyed the prototype design for the magnet pad because it can help a wider variety of people with limited mobility, as it was a more direct and easy approach to the problem of managing periods with proper pad placement. The PROWHD lab was also excited that this design would be reusable, because many reusable options for period management are not accessible for people with limited mobility.
We gained many ideas to incorporate in future prototypes, such as making detachable magnets so the pad and underwear could be easily washed. There was also an idea mentioned to make a DIY kit with provided instructions and magnetic strips, so people can modify their own underwear, which would have more universal appeal. All of the feedback received from the second Design Review was very crucial in helping the group understand that our next steps will entail creating as many prototypes as possible with the new ideas we have been given and will generate.
Therefore, with the valuable information received about the lack of range of motion in the wrist for many people in our target audience with the hand loop and the easier design to use with the magnet pad, our group decided to continue to focus entirely on our second design, the reusable magnet pad.
Design Review 3 Goals and Plan for Next Semester
Using the feedback from the Design Review, we are going to begin rapid prototyping. Over winter break, each person on the team is going to make a prototype out of cheap materials for possible magnet layouts to use in our design. This prototyping stage will enable us to have a more concrete idea of the magnet layout for our possible magnet approaches (including magnet buttons, sew-in magnets, and removable magnet bars). We will then order the magnets and incorporate the magnets into our prototypes. By the end of January, we plan to have functioning prototypes with a variety of magnet approaches to test with our main community partner contact. During testing, we will determine the ideal pull force and the layout of the magnets and will first focus on optimizing the pad, underwear, and magnet design for this specific individual. Then, we will conduct focus groups and use the feedback to incorporate customizable components to make the pad available to more individuals with limited mobility. If we have time, we will work on implementing our product by making a plan for manufacturing.
