We were asked to create a product/service that focuses on one of the human factors of design principles. We are interested in exploring the topic of competency around sex. Sexual competency is understanding all things sex, from anatomy to self-pleasure and consent. Competency touches upon players' understanding of the topic and the ability to listen, learn, and teach others without spreading misconceptions.

Project Duration
January-March 2021
10 Weeks

Course
SCAD
Human Factors
Professor Ascanio Colonna di Paliano

Dream Team
Arjun Gupta 
Khushi Bhatt
Pranshu Agarwal
Seth Stomberger

My Role
Strategy Lead
Product Design

Deliverables
Vision Video
Prototype
Process Book
Poster

We realized that nothing in the market targeted sex-positivity, competence, and open conversation. The space we wanted to look into was unexplored, and it dawned on us that we needed to find out what people's emotions and mindsets were around sex to understand their needs to create something truly impactful and meaningful.

2

Primary Research

After conducting the bulk of our secondary research, We became highly interested and passionate about the conversation around sex and wanted to see if everyone else felt the same way. We conducted a survey and interviews.

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Survey Responses

We sent out a survey with hopes to gauge people's sex education levels, Whom they talk to about their sexual experiences, and general thoughts on sex and sexual pleasure.

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Responses confirmed that people did want to talk about sex. 

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Male Identifying

Bisexual

Female Identifying

Gender Fluid

Non-Binary

Gay

Lesbian

Bi-Curious

Closeted

Pansexual

18-40 Years Old

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Interviews

1
Focus Group

1
SME

We wanted to dive deep into people's understanding and opinions on sex during our interviews. Our interviewees ranged from 17-to 25-year-olds, from various backgrounds and educations, fitting perfectly into our target audience

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"We need to tell people how normal they are."

Erica Smith, SME, Creator of Purity School DropOut

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"Nobody ever talked to me about sex; all I have ever been told to this day is that sex is something you do after marriage to have kids."

"The moment I started talking openly to people about sex, the more I became confident and able to express my pleasures and concerns with my partners."

"I truly wish I was able to learn from my experiences and the experiences of others instead of being scared by them."

Quotes from Interviewees

3

Research Synthesis

After gathering data from primary and secondary research, we compiled 946 data points and narrowed them down to 4 key insights.

People feel that sex education should be a fundamental part of their lives and should be taught fun, impactful, and memorable.

People want to normalize straightforward conversations about their sexual experiences and identity and learn from their own experiences and others.

The sexual experience is vast, and it is essential to reassure people that whatever they are experiencing is likely wholly normal.

People feel that talking to their loved ones about sex can be helpful, but these conversations are awkward and difficult to materialize.

17-25 years old
All genders and sexualities

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We found that individuals saw the most change in their exploration and view of sex after they experienced personal freedom from adults. People actively sought to explore their sexualities and began the journey of finding their true selves.

Moreover, we want to make sure they are educated and ready by targeting this age group that will become parents in the future or simply educate the next generations on sex and sex positivity.

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Target Audience

How might we facilitate healthy and honest conversations and encourage emotional vulnerability between people regarding sex?

How might we replace unhealthy mindsets and misconceptions with positive and healthy sex education?

How might we help future parents create a more sex-positive environment and healthier upbringing for younger generations?

How might we uplift marginalized communities in the conversation of sex positivity?

4

Ideation

We are surrounded by blue waters, which was initially overwhelming. We had no idea as to what we wanted to make to help solve such a large problem area. Ideation sessions helped us get all of our crazy ideas on the table.

Using our stakeholder map, we understood where we wanted our focus to be. 

We adopted multiple ideation strategies to get to the solution with the maximum impact. We ran through multiple rounds of crazy 8s, extensive mind mapping, and filling out concept boards. These activities generated over 80 unique ideas.

We scattered and plotted all of our ideas onto an Impact vs. Feasibility map to get to that GOLDEN idea that can change how we approach sex education and positivity. 

We used our two persona, Robin and Buzz, to generate situations that our ideas could improve. Robin is having trouble fitting in at college and is uncomfortable opening up about sex and her sexuality, while Buzz is sexually active yet feels empty after any sexual activity. How can our product improve their two very different situations?

We landed on one concept that had the ability to help both Robin and Buzzs’ sexual experience, and therefore our vast target audience.

RoundTable is a focused collaboration experience designed to help create an open conversation around sex and promote sex-positivity in various contexts. 

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Containing a physical and digital experience, RoundTable facilitates conversations. It provides real-time AV feedback to help users open up, feel comforted, and empowered around the notion of sex and sexual competence.

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RoundTable paves the way for our users to learn from their experiences and others, helping them get out of unhealthy mindsets, and creating more sex-positive environments for themselves and the people around them.

*Roundtable is later changed to the name "Use Your Mouth"

5

Lofi Development

Information Architecture

We developed initial information architecture and sitemap for our mobile app as an avenue for users to interact and set up games. It contained three broad sections:

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• Home page, where players set up a game, 

• Profile, including likes, interests, and art

• Social page, where players can connect to friends and find new players.

Cultural Probe

Our cultural probe was used to determine which tonal language people are most comfortable with while talking about and opening up around the conversation of sex and pleasure.

We set up a table in two public spaces and invited strangers to play a card game with us. All of the cards had sexual experience based questions on them.

We used five tonal languages for the card game to test the kind of language people respond to best. This included funny, formal, inviting, indirect and seductive.  

22 Participants

What We Learned

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• While people were hesitant to open up to us initially, the conversation will start to flow near the end, especially if there are large groups. 

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• People became more comfortable talking about sex in public after hearing us talking about it, using sensitive words. Prolonged exposure began to normalize the conversation automatically​

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• People were more inclined to humorous prompts. We got the most vulnerable info from people through humorous questions

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• Most of all, every person who talked to us said they wanted to talk about sex more! They wished they could continue these conversations.

Card sorting helped us further understand what language we wanted to use in our product and helped us define our task flows and overall architecture of both the app and the product.

 Closed card sorting had them organize predetermined names into categories. 

 Open card sorting allowed users to have the freedom to label what they thought sections, or categories, should be named.

11 Tests

• People loved options and personalization, but too many options would often lead to confusion or feeling overwhelmed.​

• Questions or topics worded in a fun way sparked more interest than those in a serious tone.

• We need to offer personalization that enhances the game but does not overwhelm the user.

• We need consistent language throughout the app and physical disk.

We tested our main user task flows and created a fully interactive prototype with our main functionalities to understand how users navigate our app and physical product.

For our Lofi tests, we made our users execute our task flows on the mobile app prototype, where we had the onboarding, pre-game, during the game, and post-game task flows. We asked:

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• Is the app easy to navigate?

• Do users understand how to play?

• Are users able to set up games?

• How do users react to switching between phone and mobile?

• Is the feature set effective in terms of being a solution?

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We also had the paper prototype on the side used as a placeholder for the physical disk. 

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• Participants thought the concept was a powerful and fun medium of opening up the conversation and helping people better embody their sexuality.

• People thought that the task flows made sense for the most part.

• People had no issues switching between the disk and their phones when setting up and then playing the game.

• Art is a fantastic and novel concept. The sharing aspect excites users.

• People needed more context for the explicit purpose and function of the disk and how they could use it. 

• Some of the wording felt too formal, and users wanted playful language.

• The app felt a little overwhelming at times - People did not see the social feature as applicable and wanted to skip over game setup. 

• Play and Learn felt too broad, and people were confused by what Learn is. People immediately related more to Play than to Learn.

• The interactions for the disk were complex and needed to be reduced to the next question and previous question. 

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6

Midfi Development

We made significant changes from our lofi development and conducted another round of testing with improved task flows.

We revamped our original sitemap to include the following changes based off of our lofi testing:

• We removed the social aspect entirely. 

• We enabled users to skip through more things, making setting up games simpler and less time-consuming.

• We removed the step to choose Play or Learn to reduce user confusion. Play is the primary motive of the game with learning being built in as an outcome.

Changes

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Onboarding

The new onboarding aims to use more visual demonstrations of how everything works and play the game. Instructions are made more transparent, visual, and concise. 

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Game Setup

The game's primary focus is PLAY, with aspects of LEARN being built into the experience. Players also can skip through more steps and get straight to the game.

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Gameplay

Gameplay is now integrated with spur-of-the-moment games to bring fun back into the conversation and assure that all players are engaged.

Key Takeaways

• Users were confused by the three categories and then specifying more, and they wanted to focus just on the subcategories.

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• Users wanted to see the game controls on their phones before seeing the art during the game.

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• Onboarding felt confusing and needs to be more concise.

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• Users wanted the game insights to be displayed on the disk

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• Users want the option to opt-out of audio. 

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• Users thought that the visuals felt unfinished.

Changes for Final

• We shortened onboarding to just the absolute essentials to make it easier to absorb.

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• We made a physical instruction manual to get the information they needed without making the phone interactions overwhelming.

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• We revamped the visual identity for the UI thoroughly to look more fresh and on-brand.​

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• We gave users an option to opt-out of audio.

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• We added new game insight screens for the disk

Final Concept

Use Your Mouth is a game that aims to start healthy and fun conversations about sex with the hopes of normalizing this taboo topic. Use Your Mouth brings awareness and battles misconceptions seeded by sex-negativity by encouraging hilarious, open conversations with friends, family, and even strangers!

Game Modes

The game keeps players on their toes! They may be thrown into a minigame at random, whether that be two truths and one lie or a 60-second hot seat to keep up the energy and push for those memory-making conversations.

4 Strangers
47 Minutes
4 New Bonds

Yes, we played Use Your Mouth in real life with 4 people who did not know each other on a personal level. There was laughter, comfort, and a sense of welcomeness. Within just 20 minutes, one of the participants opened up about experiences they haven't told anyone, and another participant said that they had never felt so comfortable talking about sex and pleasure.

We then played Use Your Mouth with our class, where once again, people opened up. After the demonstration, everyone left with a newfound sense of sexual competency and confidence.

Deliverables and Visuals

Below are just a few of our proudest visuals and deliverables, but we have a lot of behind-the-scenes content that I would love to show in an interview setting. A look into our miro board for research and affinitization, our calendar that kept us organized, and our trusty Figma channel that houses all of our visual progress through the 10 weeks.

• Listening to your target audience will lead you in the right direction, but you can't please everyone.

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• Testing such as cultural probes and card sorting are very beneficial when there is a proposed goal of testing.

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• While user testing, it is important to encourage the user testing the product and avoid trying to control what they use and how they use it.

• I want to test sooner and more often, even when the idea is not yet fully fleshed out.

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• I want to do a better job at keeping written progress throughout the project that the team can refer back to at any time.

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• I will encourage team bonding, transparency and vulnerability.