Shared Uses of Intimate Technology

Intimate technologies are conceptualized as a highly individual and personal tool. This neglects the reality of their use which is both shared and social.

This project will deliver foundational knowledge on how intimate technologies get shared alongside investigating how feminist orientations to design might offer different ways of sharing these highly personal technologies.

We focus our investigations on how individuals share intimate technologies with their partner(s) in the context of reproductive health.

Within this context, there is an urgent need for research and design to engage with the wider social context of ‘use’, not least to ensure that intimate technologies can better account for the nuances and complications entangled with how these technologies get shared.

The project has three main objectives: (1) To study the shared use of intimate health technology as a relationally performed phenomenon, with the help of interviews and design probes with users of two intimate technologies (a digital contraceptive application and a sperm tracking tool). (2) To radically reimagine how intimate technologies are shared through utilizing a feminist utopian approach to design, and (3) To rethink intimate technologies through the careful development of design principles that support designing for the sharing of these technologies while reckoning with the risks and unintended consequences inherent to this practice.