Making Intimate Technologies Together
Paper in proceeding, 2025
Feminist research highlights the urgent need to challenge the oppressive design of commercial intimate technologies, particularly how the FemTech industry restricts access to intimate bodily knowledge through paywalls and proprietary systems. Yet, for decades, women and marginalized communities have turned to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) or 'hacking' practices to reclaim control over their own gynecology and intimate health, addressing gaps often ignored by medical research and healthcare. Inspired by visual themes from these movements, this pictorial critically explores how designers and HCI researchers might advance DIY approaches to intimate technologies. We exemplify this with reflections from a series of workshops on handmade intimate sensors, and draw out the joyful potential of collaborative making - building alliances, destigmatizing intimate health, and using craft to subvert gender stereotypes. We discuss matters of safety when making together and contribute to ongoing work on building feminist makerspaces.
making
intimate care
intimate sensor
menstrual tracking
research through design
feminist making
DIY
open source
Author
Nadia Campo Woytuk
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Mafalda Samuelsson-Gamboa
University of Gothenburg
Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Interaction Design and Software Engineering
Alejandra Gómez Ortega
Stockholm University
Joo Young Park
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Anupriya Tuli
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Deirdre Tobin
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Fiona Bell
University of New Mexico
Marianela Ciolfi Felice
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
Madeline Balaam
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
DIS 2025 Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference
2818-2832
9798400714856 (ISBN)
2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference, DIS 2025
Madeira, Portugal,
Madeira, Portugal,
Subject Categories (SSIF 2025)
Gender Studies
Design
DOI
10.1145/3715336.3735412