Challenge

Navigating one’s sexual health as a young adult can oftentimes feel embarrassing, especially when shopping for contraceptives or other sexual health products such as UTI medication, personal lubricants, pads, tampons, adult incontinence products, etc. I saw an opportunity to combat the stigma of purchasing these items by iterating on the in-person shopping experience for these sensitive products.  

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Exploration

I have found that a kiosk would be a good physical avenue to explore a solution for this problem. Self-service kiosks are already used to facilitate interactions between businesses and consumers without necessitating person-to-person interaction. At the time of this study, a kiosk that solved the problem was nonexistent. However, I found that vending machines that sold contraceptives have been applied in a limited run, specifically on campuses, and the reactions to their implementation have been mixed.

After visits to local drugstores and markets to see where these sensitive items were located within the stores, I also did some light behavioral observations of shop attendees when browsing and purchasing items from these areas. I have found that these items are typically tucked away where they can provide some privacy when browsing, however, they have also been tucked away that made them hard to find, and oftentimes surrounded by non-related items such as contact lens solution and foot creams Being placed near other various items, shoppers would quickly look elsewhere when other shoppers pass by.

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Given the insights learned from the observation I asked 3 questions directed at generating ideas on how to help the three main customer bases of women buying feminine hygiene products, elderly people buying incontinence products, and young adults buying contraceptives and sexual health products. Using the ideas generated from these questions, I arranged them in a chart mapping the usability vs the implementation feasibility of each feature. During this process, it was crucial in prioritizing the features and what features although sounded great during ideation, would be difficult to implement given the constraints.

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Interviews

I conducted interviews to figure out where the pain points were in the purchasing process for sensitive items and whether or not the items were sensitive to the primary consumers in the first place.  

From my research, I concluded that:

1. The scope of the project could be narrowed to be more specific to sexual health only, as the main consumers who purchase menstrual and incontinence products are typically not embarrassed to purchase them as they are considered necessities. And elderly people tend to purchase their products online and through subscription services.
2. When people do purchase contraceptives in-store, they want to be in a private area when browsing.
3. Waiting in line with products in hand and talking with the cashiers are where the highest levels of discomfort lay. 
4. The uncomfortable feeling is due to the thought of being judged by others while purchasing. We must combat this by making the experience fun and discrete. Own the buying process

Personas

From the research and the exploration, I was able to hone in on the primary user persona that the kiosk would serve as the young college-aged adult.

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From here the project pivots to providing a fun, informative, and empowering experience to create a comfortable and easy purchasing experience while combating the stigma of buying sexual health products. 

Ideation

With the target demographic in mind, I developed a user flow map to make the purchasing and informative aspects of the kiosk as straightforward and intuitive as possible. I made it a goal to make it simple to go from learning about a contraceptive or intimacy item to a direct link to purchase those items in their respective categories, reducing the cognitive load for the users.

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I used a mood board to generate ideas for the proper aesthetic and look to convey the fun and empowerment that I was looking to achieve with the kiosk’s brand. From there and the initial logo sketches I was able to refine those ideas to the first iteration of the brand logo. 

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Heading back to the mood board I further refined the look and feel of the logo, simplifying the color selection to come up with the second and final iteration of the logo as well as a proper style guide to guide the look and feel of the kiosk experience.

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From there I built a few physical prototypes along with sketching possible layout choices for the application. Here I realized that for a kiosk that readability, size, and contrast are very important this is to reduce the cognitive load of the users when navigating a kiosk interface. By reducing load, I hope that the shopping experience becomes less stressful leading to a more pleasant and fun experience.

The first prototype of the kiosk looked more like a traditional vending machine with a “push to open” item dispensing area.  After some testing, I discovered that this kiosk experience didn’t exactly convey the fun experience that I wanted the kiosk to provide. The second prototype emphasizes this aspect more by adding a more unique package dispensing function, emulating the actions of opening a present with a box unit pushed out of the main kiosk where the purchased item can be found.

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Implementation

The final prototype of the application and the kiosk came together using the style guide and moodboard to elicit whimsy, fun, and magic.

I tested this with a few members of the targeted user base and their consensus was that the experience was in fact fun and avoided any embarrassment regarding the purchasing process of sexual health items.  

Reflection

Keywords such as fun, private, and fast were brought up constantly throughout the interviewing and debriefing process after the test. Given the generally positive feedback of the testers, I would consider this journey into prototyping a kiosk a success. Walking away from this process I learned the importance of rapid prototyping and constant testing to refine the product and to achieve the end goal. It was not only useful but crucial, to take the given feedback to further flesh out the initial idea into a presentable and successful prototype. To further build on this I would team up with a product designer and a software developer, to create an even higher fidelity prototype, complete with actual machinery and technology to make the magic, a reality.