Menopause Legacies: Designing to Record and Share Experiences of Menopause Across Generations
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Menopause is often overlooked or medicalized, consequently devaluing individual experiences and failing to support individuals experiencing this life event. Family dynamics, death, and taboo further mean that individuals often miss out on information that could help them contextualize their experiences. We examine participant experiences with menopause and explore designs of digital and non-digital legacies for sharing menopause experiences across generations. We conducted semi-structured interviews and design sessions with 17 participants who experienced or are experiencing menopause. We report participant information needs and sense-making practices, including what personalized information participants wish to pass down and preferred formats for intergenerational sharing. Findings highlight the potential of using storytelling and life-logging to create "holistic" memories of the menopause journey, to support self-reflection, and for using legacies to initiate conversations about marginalized health experiences. We identify future design and research opportunities for the HCI and CSCW communities to support intergenerational sharing of non-medicalized and stigmatized health experiences.
DOI: 10.1145/3686975
Institution: University of Washington
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4404173836