My Cycle
A Comprehensive Look at Women’s Health
Winter Semester 2022
Background
During my junior year, I took a rigorous 6 credit product design course called Integrated Product Development (IPD). My design team consisted of two business students, one art student, one UI/UX student, and me, the engineer. Every team was given the semester to undergo a complete product design process under the same design challenge. We presented our final prototype, website, and business model through a live trade show at Ross Business School to “sell” our product. My team’s product, My Cycle, took 1st place at the trade show.
Advances in nutrition, medical technology and pharmaceuticals in public health have led to longer, healthier lives for many people. These positive outcomes are not yet enjoyed by all people. Women in many countries and diverse social and economic groups still lack access to resources including high-quality health management information, high-quality care, and social support systems. This lack of access leads to measurably worse health outcomes, particularly in the areas of reproductive and maternal health. Innovative products including current technology have the potential to improve these outcomes to the enrichment of life for women and those who love them.
Design Context
Design Challenge
Design a tangible product solution that improves the health of women, in one or both of the categories of reproductive and maternal health.
Specifications
Retail price < $100
Proven practical feasibility through physical prototypes
Target Demographic: Women of childbearing age 2022
Research
We interviewed five young adults, seven mothers, and one medical practitioner to learn about their struggles regarding their reproductive and/or menstrual health. We also conductive secondary research by reading academic papers, news articles, and blogs.
Key Pain Points
Current period tracking apps can be inaccurate and don’t provide a holistic picture of what’s happening.
Understanding how different factors like stress and energy relate to their menstrual cycle can be challenging.
Using a menstrual cup can be messy.
Staying consistent while using birth control can be challenging.
Ideation
Smart Pill Bottle
Smart Tampon
One Handed Menstrual Cup
Temperature Tracking Bracelet and App
Squeeze Menstrual Cup
Screw Off Menstrual Cup
Our Focus: Basal Body Temperature (BBT)
We decided to focus on improving the experience of keeping track of a woman’s menstrual cycle and providing women with a holistic view of their health. To set us apart from existing period tracking products, we used basal body temperature (BBT) as our key tracking metric.
What is Basal Body Temperature (BBT)?
BBT is your internal body temperature when your body is at complete rest (i.e. the moment you wake up). It is a valuable metric in a woman’s menstrual cycle but it’s typically only been used to track ovulation and fertility.
BBT is relevant to more than just a woman’s fertility. It is correlated to their stress, energy levels, mood, and other factors that affect women during their period. The issue is that there aren’t any cost effective or intuitive ways of keeping track of this. It’s often tracked using paper graphs and oral thermometers.
“I’m stressed a lot, I exercise a lot, I have mood swings, and lack energy all the time. I try to track my cycle using a period tracking app, but it’s never accurate and I never know what’s going on with my body.”
- Mia, age 20
All women are entitled to understanding how their BBT can be used to understand their menstrual cycle.
Our goals:
Provide a simple and affordable way of tracking your BBT.
Help women understand how different factors in your menstrual cycle relate to one another.
Give women the power to make connections and understand their health using their body’s data
Credit: Samantha Greenhill
Prototyping
Since I was the only engineer on my team, all of the physical prototyping fell to me. It was a great chance for me to develop my Arduino, soldering, and coding skills. Every prototype boiled down to an off the shelf temperature sensor that sent temperature data to another computer. Our first prototype used an Arduino to send this data to my computer.
Initial Prototype
Since we didn’t have the means to produce a prototype that was ready to sell, I made two prototypes to present at the trade show. The first is a “works like” prototype that demonstrates the functionality of our product using 3D printed parts and off-the-shelf electrical components. Unlike my initial prototype, this model communicates with my computer and the My Cycle app via Bluetooth.
Final “Works Like” Prototype
I2C digital temperature sensor soldered to Adafruit bluetooth microcontroller running Arduino code.
3.7V 400mAh battery and toggle switch.
3D printed strap and housing.
To give users an idea of what our product would like if made at scale, I created this prototype using a 3D printed piece and a FitBit strap. It is reasonable to assume that the active technology in our “works-like” prototype could be condensed to this size, if not smaller.
Final “Looks Like” Prototype
Credit: Samantha Greenhill
Check out the product website my teammates made here.
Trade Show
We presented My Cycle at a mock trade show with the other teams in our class. Passersby were given a hypothetical budget of $150 and five products to learn about and “purchase”. Our sale price was $45. Our cost of production was $9.50. It was my first experience pitching a product to stakeholders. Helping develop a cost model for our product also gave me exposure to the business side of product development.
