Work

Inclusive by Design: Rethinking Endometriosis Self-Tracking for Trans and Gender-Diverse Users

Year: 2026

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: Personal health tracking technologies are commonly designed around cisnormative and binary assumptions, limiting their usefulness and safety for transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals. This paper investigates how TGD people with endometriosis engage with existing health-tracking tools and the barriers they encounter in doing so. We report findings from an online questionnaire (n=34) exploring lived experiences, self-tracking practices, and perceptions of exclusion. Our results highlight a set of design tensions in current tools, including privacy and disclosure concerns, gendered designs, reductionist symptom models, and an emotional burden associated with tracking. We argue for more inclusive, gender-affirming approaches to self-tracking and present this work as a provocation for researchers and designers to rethink how identity and embodied experiences are encoded in self-tracking technologies.

DOI: 10.1145/3786579.3804915

Authors: Sara Patrício Canhoto, Tiago Guerreiro, Rúben Gouveia

Institutions: University of Lisbon, Laboratório de Sistemas Informáticos de Grande Escala

Topic: Innovative Human-Technology Interaction

Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Good health and well-being, Reduced inequalities, Gender equality

Open Access status: gold

OpenAlex ID: W7167087904

FWCI:

Cites: 28

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