Design for Sexual Health Among Women

Exploring how design can reduce stigma, increase knowledge, and support sexual health and gender equality.
Sexual Health
Design for Sustainable Behavior
System Design

Female sexuality has long been shaped by shame, silence, and misinformation. This project explores how design can challenge those norms and support improved sexual health and gender equality for women.

Focus of the Concept

The project proposes a multi-layered design solution that addresses both:

  • Educational gaps around female sexuality and self-pleasure
  • Behavioural barriers such as shame, invisibility, and lack of shared language

Rather than a single product or campaign, the outcome is a system-level proposal combining sexual education reform with the use of conceptual artefacts to support long-term behavioural change. The solution is presented through an informational poster and a supporting product concept.

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Organization
Chalmers University of Technology
Duration
6 week
Team
Myself + 3 Product Designers ( From Chalmers University )
Year
2020
The process

Ovewview of the approach & methods

1. Design Approach

The project was guided by a human-centred and behaviour-driven design approach, with a strong focus on long-term cultural and behavioural change rather than short-term interventions.

Two main design frameworks structured the work:

  • Activity-Oriented Design
    Used to analyse everyday behaviours, social norms, and environmental factors influencing female self-pleasure. This approach helped identify mismatches between women’s needs, existing products, education, and societal expectations.
  • Design for Sustainable Behaviour (DfSB)
    Applied throughout the project as both an approach and a method, from early research to concept development. DfSB was used to explore how design can encourage more open, sustainable behaviours around sexual health by reducing shame, increasing visibility, and supporting normalisation over time.

Together, these frameworks ensured that behavioural impact — not aesthetics or product form — remained the core driver of the project.

2. Research Methods

To ground the work in real experiences, the project combined qualitative and quantitative research methods:

  • Interviews
    Conducted to understand personal experiences, attitudes, and challenges related to female sexuality, masturbation, and sexual education. These insights highlighted emotional barriers such as shame, uncertainty, and lack of guidance.
  • Surveys
    Used to identify broader patterns in knowledge gaps, comfort levels, and language use around female self-pleasure. Survey results helped validate themes identified in interviews.
  • Literature and Data Research
    Included research on sexual health, gender equality, sexual education in Sweden, and historical perspectives on female sexuality. This provided context and supported the need for systemic change.

Insights from these methods were synthesised into behavioural patterns and mismatches, which informed both the educational proposal and the conceptual artefact.

Final Concept

The outcome of this project is a multi-layered design proposal

1. Reframing Sexual Education

The project proposes a redesigned model for sexual education in Sweden that places female sexuality, pleasure, and anatomy on equal footing with male sexuality.

The suggested solution includes:

  • Earlier and more continuous education around female sexuality
  • Clear, inclusive language for anatomy, pleasure, and masturbation
  • Visual and digital tools that explain how female pleasure works, not just that it exists
  • A curriculum that evolves across age groups, supporting long-term understanding rather than one-off interventions

The intended outcome is to reduce shame, increase confidence, and normalise female self-pleasure as a healthy part of life.

2. Supporting Behavioural Change Through Artefacts

Alongside education, the project proposes the use of physical artefacts as behavioral triggers to support normalisation in everyday life.

The conceptual artefact — presented through a redesigned sex toy — demonstrates how:

  • Visibility can reduce stigma
  • Design aesthetics can invite curiosity rather than secrecy
  • Objects placed openly in the home can prompt reflection, discussion, and use

The artefact is not intended as a final commercial product, but as a design example showing how physical form, placement, and emotional tone can support sustainable behavioural change.

3. System-Level Impact

Together, the educational framework and the use of artefacts form a systemic approach to sexual health design, where:

  • Education builds knowledge and language
  • Artefacts reinforce behaviour and normalisation
  • Social conversations are encouraged both privately and publicly

The posters function as a tool to clearly communicate this system — mapping problems, interventions, and intended outcomes — but the final result is a proposed strategy for long-term cultural and behavioural change, not a poster or a single object.

Final Solution

Final Concept

The artifact concept:

The focus of this project was not to develop a fully detailed product, but to create a conceptual artefact that communicates how such an object could look, feel, and exist in everyday life.

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