Future of Menstrual Products - Future Artifact

#Futureofworkandplay

For project 2 of my design course, the future of work and play, we are tasked with creating an artifact from the future in relation to our field, mine being, The Future of Menstrual Products. In week 1, I created a system map, chose and narrowed my concepts to 3 ideas and brainstormed them to find a final concept to move forward with.

System Map

A system map describes how a system works, it uses icons and arrows to clearly and quickly show an audience a system. To start, I created a list of people, places and things that menstrual products affects.

Areas affected by menstrual products.

From this, I created a system map of the present, narrowing my people, places and things to the areas that I want to focus on which are awareness, policies and packaging.

System Map of the Present

I then added my insight and created a system map of the future in relation to this insight. My insight was Government funded research will allow people with authoritative power to rethink policies and produce products that are sustainably healthy for the environment and the body. The major addition to my map was research, the new areas affected are defined by the brighter coloured arrows. I spent project 1 of this course finding insights on menstrual products, you can find out more here.

System Map of the Future

Concepts

After creating the system map of the future, I brainstormed concept ideas and then picked out the 7 I was most interested in.

Brainstorming Concepts

I wrote down the effects of these concepts in relation to the 'people, places and things' table I had created earlier to think more in depth about these concepts and help myself realise why I was most interested in these concepts. I realised I was interested in concepts that had wide impact on this area, things that don't just affect one thing, but are interconnected and affect a wide population such as non-menstruators, policies, or stigma.

Narrowed Concepts

Rubric

I applied a rubric to rank my concepts and narrow them down to three final concept ideas to explore. I rated them upon three different factors; how realistic is the concept to be implemented in the next decade; how reasonable is it to create in a month; how original the concept is.

My final chosen concepts were:

In the next week I will brainstorm these concepts and create some mood boards to narrow my final concept.

References

System Map of the Present, System Map of the Future, Brainstorming Concepts. [Icons] Flaticon. https://www.flaticon.com/search?word=tampon