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Entrepreneurship
Design Research
Iterative Prototyping
Interaction Design

Team

Aakanksha Ardhapurkar, Christy Zhang, Hanna Lauterbach & Chris Spaulding

Faculty Advisors

Birju Shah

This was an entrepreneurial endeavor to use human-centered design to develop products that lower the barriers to adoption for menstrual cups. Some parts of okaTrack were developed during a Product Management course taught by Birju Shah but the project started before the course and continued after.

March 2019 - Current

 

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okaTrack by okakopi

 

3000 tampons can be replaced by a single menstrual cup, a reusable form of period protection that is inserted and sealed in the vagina to collect menstrual fluid. And while cups are more sustainable and more effective, using one means dealing with significant changes to a daily routine. Not knowing how full the cup is or when to empty it, is challenging, especially for those new to it. And constantly being conscious of potential spills makes people feel like they are learning about their periods for the first time. With these barriers preventing 42% of women from switching to a cup, there is an increasing need for a solution that caters using a cup to a person’s period.


Problem Definition & Opportunities

In forming okakopi and designing the okaCup and digging deeper into the challenges people face when learning to use a menstrual cup, we learned that cups are extremely disruptive to someone’s daily schedule. Not knowing how full the cup is or when to empty it is a huge pain point for novice cup users, especially since the risk of a spill is disastrous. Even those who are experienced still struggle with considering the best time to empty the cup and which bathrooms they’ll have access to, assuming their day goes perfectly.

With the learning we collected from our research with okaCup and talking to over 200 potential & experienced cup users, we knew that people didn’t trust menstrual cups to give them a stress-free first experience and that leaks & spills quickly discourage repeat usage. Even the potential of a major leak is enough to prevent people from trying a cup in the first place.

With this insight in mind, we wanted to expand our goal of a mess-free menstrual cup experience to a digital platform that helps cup users know when to empty their cup.

Concept Generation, Prototyping, Testing, and Iteration

We started by creating interactive wireframes that expressed our concept of an app that predicts a user’s flow and notifies them to empty their cup when it’s full. We then ran a series of interviews with potential users of various experience levels with menstrual cups to narrow in on who this app would be most suited for and what functionality it needs to have.

We also conducted quick market research on the concept by creating a landing page for people to sign up to be notified of updates on the app and received over 100 organic signups within a week.

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Solution & Next Steps

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okaTrack is a digital platform that builds flow patterns over time through user aggregated data. When a user empties their cup, they record how full it is on okaTrack. okaTrack will then notify them when their cup is full to prevent overflows, spills, and leaks. This also helps our users have a more accurate understanding of their menstrual flow by enabling them to see their personal flow patterns and visualize the capacity of their cup without going to the bathroom to check.

Aakanksha & I are currently working on developing a working MVP to launch with a select group of users.