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Clóda O Loughlin 

BA [Hons] Interaction + User Experience Design

Hi there! I'm Clóda, an interaction and user experience designer from Kerrry. My main passions are physical interaction design, user research, user testing and app design. My interests consist of designing for the female user experience of menstruation- products, marketing, education- as well as mental health. My main goals as a designer are to design for good, design for change and to always strive to make the most enjoyable and beautiful user experience for the users.

Bodywise Poster 1. This poster is the first of two in the kit. It is a fun, interactive, gentle learning journey through the female puberty and menstruation experience. The poster includes interactive elements- felt illustrations of many important aspects of the learning experience. Attached to the poster with velcro sticky dots, the felt illustrations can be taken off and interacted with by the primary school students. Repetition through taking them off and sticking them on can improve the learning experience.
Inner Seasons Poster 2. This is the second poster in the kit. This is a more interaction heavy poster as it comes after learning the important information, it is a more in-depth journey through the female menstrual cycle. This poster categorises the four different menstruation cycle phases as their own individual seasons. Each season is revealed through using the interactive wheel to reveal the important information regarding that phase/season. The children can then use the interactive felt illustrations to learn what to eat, avoid, activities and self care is important to that phase of their menstrual cycle, with the help of their teacher.
Packaging. The Bodywise project is intended to be a HSE and Department of Education initiative. The interactive kit will be delivered to all schools nation-wide in it's fun, quirky packaging. The traditional poster cylinder is adapted with Bodywise branding and holds the two a1 posters. It is accompanied by a round box filled with the interactive felt illustrations, instructions for use and the interactive wheel.
Vital to the user research process is the creation of personas. I used this persona to really get into the head of a young girl. I wanted to figure out what their main frustrations are, what motivates them, what influences them. From secondary research as well as recalling many of the complaints I had heard from my younger sister, I developed my persona and Mia Mason was born. I often referred back to this persona throughout my research and design process to make sure I was still on the right track.
Minor-App. The Bodywise app works in tandem with the Bodywise poster kit. It works as a take home element of the Bodywise project. Children can download the app with their parents on a device at home to recap on what they have learned. The app also allows them to track their menstrual cycle uses the 'inner seasons' to make it fun and easily understandable for the child.
App Prototyping is a huge part of UX, testing at a paper prototype level to identify what does and does not work can save time for changes later in the design and development process. Often we can get caught up in designing on screens but I find that the paper prototype stage allows me to plot out the structure and content of the app, making sure I reach all of my users needs from the get go.
User Testing is a vital stage to the user research process. It was important to make sure that my interactive posters made sense. A student teacher came to do a user test with me. They found the posters cute, easy to understand, simple and fun. They felt their students would interact very well with the project.
BodyWise

BodyWise is a design intervention which creates a fun, gentle, interactive learning experience for primary school children to learn about menstruation and the female puberty experience. Menstruation education is generally not very engaging or inclusive for all children in the class, this can breed stigma and shame. Bodywise aims to tackle that stigma and shame by introducing a more enjoyable, open learning experience. The project is intended as a HSE and Department of Education initiative that will be rolled out to all primary schools nation-wide, tacking the inequality in current menstruation education nation-wide.


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Menstruation Marketing- The female experience of menstruation and period product advertising through the lends of Tampax.

My thesis focused on the female experience of menstruation and period products. I conducted research around the history of menstruation and period products, giving context to the current societal treatment of menstruation. Using Tampax as a benchmark of period product advertising throughout the modern history of period product advertising, I analysed the imagery, wording, depiction of blood, women and products in the advertising. I then conducted rich primary user research through focus groups in order to highlight the female experience of period product advertising and how it actually made the women feel. I used all of this research to then draw conclusions about what needs to change in the period product and menstruation industry to tackle the stigma and shame that is rife surrounding the topic. This thesis aided me in deciding on the topic of menstruation education for my major project.


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Interaction + User Experience Design
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