This study explores the possibility of designing an empowering community on a hormone-tracking application. I hereby draw inspiration from the ethos of the radical consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s to move away from the traditional individualistic approach to hormonal health. The study adopts a research-through-design approach that integrates a combination of sensitizing user engagement, somaesthetics and speculative design. By conducting interviews centred on individuals’ lived experiences surrounding hormonal health and a design workshop that emphasises collaboration and inclusion in the design process, I discuss the potential for creating a digital community that promotes a holistic and collectivist perspective for hormone-tracking applications. The aim is not to make users reliant on the community to give them knowledge. Rather, the community should enable users to collectively create a consciousness around their hormonal health and use this to empower them to better understand their hormones. The findings highlight that the design should be guided by the principles of connecting only a few people that share similar experiences and have different levels of knowledge to establish genuine human connections and collectively construct hormonal consciousness. Lastly, our study concludes that akin to the women’s health movement, the act of bringing together a group of people to discuss their health and bodies is in itself an empowering and inspiring act that fosters a sense of community. / Den här studien undersöker möjligheten att utforma en stärkande gemenskap för en hormonspårningsapplikation. Jag hämtar härmed inspiration från de radikala medvetandehöjande gruppernas etos på 1970-talet för att gå bort från det traditionella individualistiska förhållningssättet till hormonell hälsa. Studien anammar en forskning-genom-design-metod som integrerar en kombination av sensibiliserande användarengagemang, somestetik och spekulativ design. Genom att genomföra intervjuer centrerade på individers upplevelser kring hormonell hälsa och en designworkshop som betonar samarbete och inkludering i designprocessen, diskuterar jag möjligheten för att skapa en digital gemenskap som främjar ett holistiskt och kollektivistiskt perspektiv för hormonspårningstillämpningar. Syftet här är inte att göra användarna beroende av samhället för att ge dem kunskap, utan att ge dem möjlighet att starta en konversation om hormonell hälsa och koppla ihop dem för att få stöd i sina upplevelser. Resultaten visar att designen bör vägledas av principerna om att koppla samman endast ett fåtal personer som delar liknande erfarenheter och har olika kunskapsnivåer för att etablera äkta mänskliga kopplingar och kollektivt skapa kunnighet och kompetens inom hormonell hälsa. Slutligen drar studien slutsatsen att i likhet med kvinnohälsorörelsen är handlingen att sammanföra en grupp människor för att diskutera deras hälsa och kroppar i sig en förstärkande och inspirerande handling som främjar en känsla av gemenskap.

Curious Cycles responds to the tensions that arise when designing technologies for menstruation and menstrual cycles, touching upon notions of curiosity, noticing, sharing, taking or making space, and our relationships with our bodies and their fluids. The project follows a Research through Design approach, guided by Soma Design and feminist research methods. Curious Cycles are a set of cultural probes; objects and interactions designed to gather experiences and insights from ve people who menstruate, throughout the duration of a cycle (approximately one month). The objects are meant to "cultivate curiosity", provoking reections on the ways we currently relate to our bodies and bodily uids and speculating on how we might relate to them in the future. This work seeks to approach the design method of cultural probes from a feminist perspective and contributes through the concept of "cultivating curiosity", a way to design menstrual cycle technologies by attending closely to the changing social and material experiences of the body, which in turn can challenge the cultural taboos surrounding menstruation. / Curious Cycles svarar mot spänningarna som uppkommer när teknologier designas för menstruation och menstruationscykeln, genom idéer kring nykenhet, att märka, att dela med sig, att ta eller göra plats, och våra relationer med våra kroppar och deras vätskor. Projektet följer en Research through Design metodik, guidad av Soma Design och feministiska forskningsmetoder. Curious Cycles är en uppsättning cultural probes; föremål och interaktioner designade för att samla erfarenheter och insikter från fem menstruerande personer genom deras hela menstruationscykel (vilka pågår cirka en månad). Föremålen är menade att kultivera nykenhet för att framkalla reektioner kring de sätt vi för närvarande relaterar till våra kroppar och kroppsliga vätskor på, och även för att spekulera kring hur vi kan relatera till de i framtiden. Detta arbete närmar sig cultural probes från feministiska perspektiv och bidrar med konceptet "cultivating curiosity", ett sätt att designa teknologier för menstruationscykeln genom att ingående uppmärksamma förändringar av sociala och materiella erfarenheter av kroppen, vilket i sin tur kan utmana kulturella tabun kring menstruation.

Structural gendered inequality permeates intelligent systems, shaping everyday lives and reinforcing gender oppression. This study investigates how uncertainty, as an inherent characteristic of Machine Learning (ML) models, can be translated as a design material to highlight gender bias in Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. It follows an HCI feminist methodology with a threefold horizon: the re-conceptualisation of the design space that considers human and non-human perspectives (Giaccardi & Redström, 2020); the exploration of ML uncertainty as design materiality (Benjamin et al., 2020) to underscore imbued gender inequality in intelligent systems; and the disputed relations of ML uncertainty as materiality with unpredictability in Explainable AI systems, more specifically Graspable AI (Ghajargar et al., 2021, 2022). As a critical exploratory process, the knowledge contribution is the development of a set of guidelines for the design of better and more equal ML systems.

Feminist self-defense combines psychological defense and physical defense. During a self-defense class, prevention of assaults and preparation for resistance are key lessons. A woman can learn about existing techniques for physical defense, but once she finds herself in a critical situation, emotions will have a pivotal role in the action outcome. Being mentally prepared increases the chances of defending oneself with a successful outcome. For HCI researchers in embodied interaction design, it is essential to pay attention to both the emotional and bodily experiences in feminist self-defense. In this study, I explore the emotional and embodied experiences of feminist self-defense through a case study to investigate how these can inform the development of a movement-based design. The findings suggest that three aspects are central to the participants' experiences: empowerment, awareness, and mindset. Based on these three aspects, the study highlights implications for future work in the feminist self-defense design space. These implications include five qualities of bodily and emotional experiences to consider in movement-based interaction design for feminist self-defense. The five qualities are agency and control, feedback and self-reflection, providing suitable information, social sharing and collaborative growth, and interactive environment practices.

This thesis investigates how body mapping can externalize pregnancy experiences and guide design for supporting individuals during and after pregnancy. I have employed a qualitative research approach to collect and analyze data about pregnancy experiences from 24 individuals having pregnancy experience, including migrants, across the Global North and Global South. As body maps have been used in workshop setup in previous studies for visually representing and orally narrating their experiences, I have conducted workshops in individual and group settings, both online and offline, to explore potential differences in participant engagement and respon ses and analyzed the data through inductive thematic analysis. The findings of this research underscore the insights of pregnancy experiences that highlights themes like love and responsibility towards the unborn child, identity transformation, physical challenges and food cravings, loneliness, bodies not being their own and inner strength. In addition, the study also revealed participants’ reactions to using body mapping as a tool for self-reflection which highlighted feelings of liberation and sometimes revealed aspects that were unknown to them. In response to all the above findings, I present design implications in three parts to support the pregnancy journey. Firstly, I contributed knowledge on how the qualitative embodied data of pregnancy should be collected, analyzed and represented. Secondly, I presented design implications for pregnant individuals; and thirdly, I designed a self-reflective tool that can be used during postpartum as a support. / Controlling the Uncontrollable: The Impact of Reproductive Health Apps on Experiences of Pregnancy, Healthcare Professionals’ Work, and Data Governance. Funded by the Swedish Research Council. Project period, 2021-2024

Pregnant people are increasingly turning to mobile apps for support and guidance throughout their pregnancy. The popularity of pregnancy apps in society and their potential influence on how users engage with and perceive their pregnant bodies underscore a public interest in investigating the effects of these apps. However, little attention has been given to how pregnancy apps are involved and influence the pregnancy experience. This study aimed to investigate the role of pregnancy apps in the embodied pregnancy experience. Data was collected by eight interviews with pregnant people and an examination of six pregnancy apps using the walkthrough method. By employing a postphenomenological perspective, the relationship between user and technology was analysed, focusing on technology as a mediating character. The findings indicate that pregnancy apps are intimately involved in the pregnancy experience by mediating (1) a bond between parents and the unborn baby, (2) a shared experience between partners, and (3) knowledge about the pregnant body. However, the pregnant body is constructed around medical measurements, norms, and expectations about what it means to be pregnant and provides little support to the lived bodily experience.

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The popularity of mobile period tracker apps, designed to help women track their periods and fertility, has skyrocketed over the past decade. The target audience is people who menstruate, most often women. There are numerous articles on personalisation in mobile apps, but personalisation in mobile period tracker apps has been little studied. Therefore, in this thesis, I analyse the ways of collecting information about users and personalising the user's account in the period tracker apps, as well as whether this personalisation meets the needs of female users. My research question is: How could the personalisation of mobile period tracker apps be improved through design to meet real users' needs? The study builds on the user experience (UX) design process and consists of the following phases: UX research, design, and user testing. In addition, it includes an ideation part. I used post-structural feminist theory from the perspective of Judith Butler's work as a framework. I conducted seven semi-structured interviews with female users who actively use period tracker apps. I studied three chosen period tracker apps using the walkthrough method and conducted a co-design workshop using the themes identified through the thematic analysis of the interviews. The research output is a design solution tested on five participants of the study and then iterated. Through my work, I contribute to studies of reproductive technologies and the field of feminist human-computer interaction (HCI) through suggestions on personalisation.

How are technologies are designed and used tactically by activists? As the HCI community starts to contend with social inequalities, there has been debate about how HCI researchers should address approach this type of research. However, there is little research examining practitioners such as social justice activists who confront social problems, and are using technology, such as mobile phones, blogging, and social media to do so. In this dissertation, I build on this knowledge within the context of a social movement organization working to stop street harassment (harassment towards women and minorities in public) called Hollaback (ihollaback.org). I position myself as an action researcher doing research and building technologies such as mobile apps and a blogging platform to collect stories of harassment and to support activists. The organization has collected over 3000 stories and represents 50 different locales in 17 countries. Through a series of studies, I examined how technology impacts the organization, activists, and those who contribute stories of harassment. I found evidence that the storytelling platform helps participants fundamentally shift their cognitive and emotional orientation towards their experience and informs what activists do on the ground. My results suggest that doing activism using technology can help remove some barriers to participation but can also lower expectations for the amount of work required. I also looked at how different social media tactics can increase the number of followers and how traditional media plays a role in these tactics. My work contributes theoretically to the HCI community by building on social movement theory, feminist HCI, and action research methodology. My investigation also sheds light empirically on how technology plays a role in a social movement organization, and how it impacts those who participate.

This Research-through-Design conducted as thesis project within Malmö University Interaction Design Master’s programme is an attempt to bridge the gap between the quantified self and the subjective & collective experiences of the self-tracking for less normative ways of meaning-making of data. In order to accomplish this, it offers a feminist critique of self-tracking and an exploration of new features for self-tracking apps using provotypes to inform the HCI community.