ROLE
Product Designer
MY CONTRIBUTIONS
Project Management, Desk Research, Interview Moderation, Synthesis, Concept Development, User Flow, Lo-Fi, Board Game Play-Test Facilitation, Iteration.
TIMELINE
4 Weeks
TEAM
4 Interdisciplinary Product Designers
OVERVIEW
Grab a Seat started as a board game that tested whether women from conservative cultural backgrounds would open up about sexual and reproductive health if given the right space. The product was grounded in research with immigrant women across Chinese, Korean, Arab, and Indian cultural backgrounds, all living in the US but shaped by healthcare cultures elsewhere. The same research also shaped a companion app, designed in parallel from the start.
RESULT · AT A GLANCE
Participants described feeling unsafe talk about women’s reproductive health to someone else.
Engaged with the physical board game during public showcase.
"I love this so much, I wish I had this game growing up."
Companion mobile app concept grounded in user research and ready for future development.
01 — SITUATION
Women's sexual and reproductive health is broadly stigmatized, rarely discussed openly, and deeply tied to cultural shame across many communities. Each of us grew up in a different country and culture, yet we all learned about reproductive health in whispers and through guesswork.
Realizing this shared silence was not unique led us to ask:
That question is where the project began, not from a brief, but from a shared recognition. This was a final project for our course at the MHCI+D program, but the problem was personal long before it was academic.
02 — TASK
I took ownership of project management because it is genuinely how I work best. I am the kind of person who needs a task list to feel oriented, and in a team setting, that instinct becomes useful. When I can see the full timeline laid out, I know where we are, what is at risk, and what needs to move. In a four-week sprint with four designers working on a complex and sensitive problem, I knew structure would not slow us down. It would keep us from losing sight of one another, or the work.
Alongside managing the sprint, I designed the app’s Chat experience end-to-end. This included the AI health companion, the direct connection to a verified doctor, and the escalation flow that carries the user’s context into the doctor chat. I also designed the pre-appointment notes experience so women could explain what they were going through before the conversation began.
Together, our core challenge was:
Understand why conversations around women's sexual and reproductive health felt so unsafe across cultures — design a product that could make those conversations feel safer.
03 — DESK RESEARCH
Each team member started with desk research independently. Researching separately first meant we were not anchoring on the same sources or framing the problem the same way before we had even begun.
I used Perplexity AI as a research accelerator to quickly surface relevant studies, then read the underlying sources myself. My first question was:
How immigrant women in the US navigate sexual and reproductive health conversations?
I focused on immigrant women not to single out a subgroup, but because the United States has one of the largest and most diverse foreign-born populations in the world, making it a useful setting for studying this issue broadly.
Language barriers obstruct effective communication with providers
Cultural and religious beliefs can make reproductive health discussions taboo in many communities
Feelings of cultural dissonance and sexual guilt may accumulate over time, making it harder for women to seek care or speak openly even when services are available.
A 2024 scoping review published in Cureus by Mohd. Tohit and Haque on taboos in sexual and reproductive health across cultures added another layer. Their review of 134 studies found that fear of judgment consistently deters individuals from seeking essential health services, and that when cultural norms treat reproductive health as shameful or forbidden, the silence compounds across generations rather than resolving itself over time.
That made me curious about the healthcare environment itself. My second line of research focused on what makes reproductive health conversations difficult between patients and providers across cultural backgrounds. The CDC notes that in the U.S., cultural and language differences can hinder understanding, and at least 350 languages are spoken in U.S. homes. That makes reproductive health conversations especially vulnerable to miscommunication when patients and providers do not share the same language, assumptions, or communication style. A KFF survey found that 21% of women said it is difficult to find a doctor who explains things in a way they can understand.
THE LEARNING
04 — USER INTERVIEW
The team built a screener together to confirm participants matched our criteria before full interviews. Then a teammate suggested reaching out to her friends back home, and while that felt like genuine access, I pushed back. A 4-week sprint doesn't have room for timezone complexity, and the US is already home to a wide immigrant population, which meant we didn't need to go anywhere else to find the diversity we were looking for.
The team agreed and that conversation led us to refine our criteria: women living in the US, but not born nor grew up in the US. The reason was simple, growing up in the US means growing up with standard sex education, which changes how someone relates to these topics. We needed women whose relationship with reproductive health was shaped somewhere else.
We received 14 screener respondents: women from 18-40 years old from diverse cultural background. The data confirmed the silence was a lived experience across the board and the reasons behind their discomfort were consistent:
SCREENER RESULT · AT A GLANCE
Rarely or never discussed reproductive health growing up.
Discussing it was easy. All landed between difficult and very difficult.
We moved forward and conducted 6 user interviews remotely through Zoom. I moderated 4 of the 6. Our participants spanned Chinese, Korean, Arab, and Indian cultural backgrounds, all living in the US. All 6 described feeling unsafe discussing reproductive health in their families or communities growing up.
"There was no safe space at home to talk about this kind of thing.."
"…It's cultural beliefs that make it shameful and very hard to talk about openly..."
One moment stood out for me when a participant described her experience using Flo's, a period-tracking app anonymous community feature:
"I like the anonymous feature. The fact that I don't know who I am talking to, and I'm not gonna meet or interact with them again, makes it easier to share and not feel judged.”
THE TAKEAWAY
The silence lived inside families and one of them were describing “one difficult conversation”, they all were describing an absence, a topic that had never existed in their households.
That behavior, reading without speaking, lurking as a form of belonging, told us something important. A safe space for these women did not require participation. It required the option not to.
12 Emerging Themes from User Interview Findings
The team synthesized all 6 interviews together in FigJam, clustering findings until 12 themes emerged. Four patterns directly shaped the design direction:
Women confided in friends before family
Cultural and generational silence had compounded over time
Women sought health information online before going to doctors
Anonymous spaces lowered the stakes enough to open up.
RESEARCH INSIGHT
Design solution needed to be private by default, culturally aware, and designed so that a woman could get as close as she felt ready for, no more, no less.
05 — IDEATION
The team each wrote as many How Might We questions as we could individually, then came together to vote and narrow the field. Three HMWs survived: one focused on supporting women from conservative backgrounds in discussing sensitive health topics without fear of judgment, one on creating spaces that normalize learning together about reproductive health, and one on helping women organize and connect fragmented knowledge about their own bodies.
With those three questions as anchors, each team member came back with ideas. The range was wide: storytelling platforms, health trackers, infographic inserts in tampon and pad boxes, AR learning posters in public spaces, a platform to recommend healthcare providers by cultural background, an anonymous buddy system, and a card game. Every idea was trying to answer the same underlying need through a different shape.
TWO IDEAS I BROUGHT
A culturally-sensitive provider matching system — women could find doctors filtered by language, cultural background, and openness to sensitive topics.
A pre-appointment preparation feature — women could write down their concerns before an appointment, with those notes summarized and sent directly to their provider before the session began.
The research had shown that women spent energy in clinical settings explaining context that should have already been understood, and that many avoided appointments altogether because they could not say what they needed to say out loud. This feature was designed to remove that friction.
One teammate proposed a card game to start conversations around women's health. I agreed immediately. I had played a conversational card game before and found myself saying things out loud I had never said to anyone. The game had prompted me, not the person across the table, which meant nobody had to choose to be brave. But from my own experience I also knew a card game without structure would not hold. I researched how to give a conversational game enough structure to feel safe and deliberate rather than random, and the findings pointed to combining the card format with a board structure where the game, not the player, decided what came up next.
So we built a board game. Not as a single product, but as the fastest possible prototype of the core hypothesis: that structure, safety, and the right prompt could unlock conversations women had never had out loud before.
Board game brainstorming
Once the concept was locked, the team moved into designing how the game actually works. The mechanics we landed on:
06 — APP DESIGN
The board game could start a conversation. It could not follow a woman home, connect her to a doctor, or give her a place to ask questions at 2am when she was scared and alone. The app was designed to do all of that. Every feature maps directly to what the research uncovered: women needed privacy, no judgment, and someone worth trusting.
Privacy statement and user visibility for onboarding
USER ONBOARDING
Before a user sees any content, the app tells her what it offers and shows a privacy statement. Then it asks one question: how do you want to show up? View and comment, or view only.
The research had shown that women needed control over how much they exposed themselves before they felt safe. Giving women that choice before they see any content meant the app was not asking them to trust it yet. It was showing them they were in control.
ANONYMOUS COMMUNITY AND SIGNED UP USER BEHAVIOR
The anonymous community was a team design decision grounded directly in one research moment. A participant described using Flo's Secret Chats: "I like the anonymous feature. The fact that I don't know who I am talking to, and I'm not going to meet them again, makes it easier to share and not feel judged."
The research had pointed to a consistent pattern: women were more willing to open up when they did not have to be known. Every user gets a fake username. The community works like a forum built specifically for women's health, where anyone can read and signed-up users can comment and talk with doctors.
Anonymous community username; Verified account required for secure doctor chat.
THE ENTRY POINT OF CARE: LUNA VS. DOCTOR
One chat entry point, with the choice to talk to Luna or a doctor.
The app is organized around four tabs: Home, Community, Chat, and Account. The Chat tab is where both doctor-facing features live. Tapping it opens an inbox with two options: Talk to Luna, or Talk to a Doctor. Some women know they need a professional. Others are not ready for that yet. The entry point lets her decide how she wants to start.
ASK LUNA: AI HEALTH COMPANION
Luna offers 24/7 guidance and seamlessly connects serious concerns to a doctor with the full context already shared.
Luna is an AI health companion available around the clock with access to verified medical sources. A user can ask anything, give context, and Luna responds with relevant articles from within the app.
The interaction I designed most carefully was the escalation moment. When a user mentions something serious, like severe pain, Luna detects the severity and asks whether they would like to speak with a doctor. If they say yes, Luna transfers the conversation to a doctor chat and carries the context with it. The doctor chat opens with a summary already visible: "You wrote: irregular period, mood swings, severe pain." The doctor has read the context before responding.
The research had shown that shame and fear of judgment were the primary reasons women avoided seeking professional medical help for reproductive health concerns. The context-carrying handoff was designed with that in mind. When Luna detects severity and suggests a doctor, it is not just a technical escalation. It is the app telling the woman that what she is experiencing is serious enough to deserve professional care, without her having to overcome the shame of asking for it herself.
CULTURAL PROVIDER MATCHING WITH PRE-APPOINTMENT NOTE
Find a culturally aligned doctor, share private notes upfront, and begin the conversation with greater understanding.
For women who are ready to go directly to a doctor, the app offers a browsable list of verified women's health providers. Each card shows specialty, rating, years of experience, and languages spoken. A woman can find a provider who speaks her language and understands the cultural context she comes from. The research had shown two distinct barriers in clinical settings: medical conversations conducted in English left non-native speakers confused by terminology, and providers who did not understand the cultural stigma around reproductive health made it harder for women to open up. The language tags on each provider card were a direct response to both.
Before the chat begins, the user is taken to a note screen. The prompt reads: "Write what's going on. You're in control. Share what you've been experiencing so your doctor can better understand your needs." The placeholder text shows an example: "I've had irregular periods for two months and extreme cramps." That example was a deliberate design decision. The research showed women often did not know what was appropriate to share or how to say it. A concrete example lowers that barrier before the blank page becomes an obstacle.
The notes are private and visible only to the selected doctor. The doctor reads them before responding, and the conversation starts from a place of understanding rather than explanation.
07 — BOARD GAME PLAY TESTING
We ran two rounds of play-testing for the board game before public showcase:
Play-testing
After each of the game ended, I led a debrief interview using a feedback guideline I prepared to get specific responses from each player:
How was the game? — to get an overall picture of the experience.
What did you feel when playing it? — to understand whether players felt safe.
What do you think about the visual design? — to assess color, font, and readability.
THE CORE TENSION — THE MECHANICS AGAINST SAFETY
The skip option, meant to let players pass without answering, carried a penalty instead — which made passing feel risky in a game built around the freedom to share or not share.
The rest of the feedback clustered around friction, not fear.
08 — CRITICAL PIVOT
That feedback prompted me to look at the timeline more carefully. The board game still needed significant iteration, and we did not have enough time to move both products forward at once. The app had always been grounded in research, but research alone was not proof. We needed to know one thing first: would women actually open up about reproductive health if the right conditions existed? The board game was how we would find out.
I brought this to the team and the stronger move was to finish the board game well, then build the app after, not alongside it. Not everyone agreed right away. A few teammates wanted to keep moving on the app since we had already started. But once we looked at the timeline together, the choice became clear. We aligned on finishing the board game first.
We iterated on the board game:
THE MECHANICS
Before and After: signifier of the end of the game.
We removed the skipping punishment entirely. If a player didn't want to speak, they simply didn't. No consequence, no pressure. The win condition went with it. The last square on the board changed from "You Win" to "Finish." There was no winner. There never should have been. We also clarified how turns worked: roll the dice, speak as much or as little as you want, and when you're done, the next person rolls. The mechanic now matched what the game was always trying to do: no pressure, no timer, no judgment on how much you share. Players also asked for a card-only version, the full board setup felt too long. We built it. No board required. A simpler way to play the same game.
VISUAL DESIGN
Before and After
The cards were redesigned. We made them bigger, updated the font for readability, and reworked the color palette to improve contrast. If players couldn't read the cards comfortably, the conversation couldn't happen.
DEPERSONALIZE THE LANGUAGE
The question is pointed to the player, which was triggering for someone’s real-life experience.
We depersonalized the card content. Instead of "Your pap smear came back and you tested positive..." the cards now read "a friend’s…" The distance made it safer to engage. Players could respond without feeling like the question was directed at them personally.
SAFETY
The pledge card
We added a pledge card to be read before play begins: five rules, all framed around warmth and respect. Kindness first, judgment never. Share only what feels comfortable. Every experience is different. The pledge set the tone before a single card was drawn.
REWARDS
The coins have never been printed, but this is our token rewards
The coins became hearts. Players had already told us during the game that coins felt transactional, it didn't match the tone of what we were building. The hearts replaced that: a small, warm acknowledgment for being courageous enough to speak up.
TOKEN CHARACTERS
Before and After
The token characters were updated, not from user feedback, but from the team looking at what we had built. The game is called "Grab a Seat." The name carries a specific intention: you're welcome here, sit beside me, this conversation is worth having. The original tokens were the same chair in different colors. We changed them to different chair designs to make diversity visible and to make the invitation feel real.
THE TAKEAWAY
The board game shipped. The app is what comes next, once the hypothesis is proven and the conditions are right to build it well.
09 — PUBLIC SHOWCASE
Grab a Seat was played by 15+ players at a public showcase, children, students, professors, community members, and a women's health doctor among them. People sat down and talked. One participant wrote: "I love this so much. I wish I had this game growing up."
THE TAKEAWAY
The hypothesis held. Women would talk. They just needed the right conditions. That was the validation the app design needed to move forward.
That was the insight that validated our strategy. The board game was not the only product. It was the fastest way to test the most important hypothesis before building the app: would women actually open up if the right conditions existed? The app was always the destination. The board game was the proof of concept that told us whether we were worth building toward.
10 — REFLECTION
The app never made it past lo-fi within the 4 weeks timeline. It became a documented future direction. The underlying need was validated through research, the design was ready. What was missing was capacity.
When I saw the gap forming in week three, I did not address it. I was focused on keeping the team moving and I did not want to create tension. So I kept adjusting the timeline and hoped it would resolve itself. It did not.
What I learned is that keeping momentum is not always the right call. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is pause and name what is actually happening, even when it is uncomfortable. Pushing forward while ignoring a real problem does not make the problem smaller. It just delays the consequences.
GOING FORWARD
When I see a gap forming in a team, I will say something. Not as a confrontation, but as an honest conversation about what we can each realistically contribute and whether the scope still makes sense.