The hand grip incorporates a lengthened undulating curve. It satisfies clinical needs by improving the ergonomics of the hand placement, allowing for all angles of the hand to be comfortable while collecting specimen.
The removable head piece follows successful trends of other women’s products — its rounded features take the shape of a budding flower to mimic the anatomically-friendly shape of other products that are inserted into the vagina.
50 million Pap smears are performed each year in the U.S. to detect cervical cancer and its precursors.
To perform a Pap smear, a clinician will use an endocervical instrument to collect samples of cervical mucus along the vaginal walls and cervix of her patient. These instruments are single-use for sanitation purposes, and are therefore produced at a mass scale. Because of this, they are mainly designed for manufacturability, and have no consideration of user ergonomics, patient experience, or aesthetic form.
Cervical procedures are delicate and require precision — the tools we use should reflect that. In an era where gender equality is at the forefront of new product development, Flora is a form exploration that aims to elicit a positive emotional and physical experience for the patient, as well as a functional experience for a clinician.
DETAILS
Conducted through Pratt Institute Graduate Department of Industrial Design under the supervision of Jeff Kapec.
The instruments above are the current industry standard for cervical procedures.
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
After researching the history of product development for women’s health, and connecting it to the lack of modern innovation, three main points of causation were found:
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The historical and cross-cultural taboo about women’s health has led to an awkwardness that is misassociated with the field at large, thus creating a sense of inappropriateness to those who try to tackle its issues. This hinders interest in approaching design challenges for women’s products.
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Clinical efficacy is often a driver for doctor-centered design. And while medical professionals are the end-user of a medical product, the main stakeholder is the patient.
A patient’s comfort during a procedure and her understanding of how the medical product is being used are equally as important as the doctor’s usability of the instrument. However, most medical tools are designed for cost efficiency, without considering the emotional needs of the patient.
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Standardized medical products often don’t follow a streamlined aesthetic for well-branded instruments (as seen in the photo above). Their form language is also not obviously indicative of their function. In an era where good product identity equates to higher consumer trust, creating a cohesive line is a severely missed opportunity that most medical products face.
Research — Healthcare
Insights from principle contacts
I reached out to women’s health practitioners to involve them in the design research process. gain their insights approach procedures differently based on different patients. This provided us the opportunity for the nurse practitioners to participate in the design process.
Samantha Hyacinth | Adult Health & Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner
Samantha has been working in medicine in a variety of modern practices. Her former work at Planned Parenthood gives her perspective on women’s health and its accessibility a fresh edge. She has a range of experience practicing professionally, in the form of an women’s health nurse practitioner, as well as academically, in the form of medical training for women’s health procedures.
Debbie Scott | Family Health Nurse Practitioner
Debbie has been a practicing medical professional for over 25 years. She is well experienced, and has observed shifts in medical products and instruments throughout her work. After her medical education she noted that as products change over time, there’s not always an enforced learning of the new tools, and medical professionals have to adapt to the changed instruments on their own.
Mapping out the medical system
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I roughly mapping out the components of western medical systems surrounding women’s health resulted in a greater understanding of how the products and services interact with the main users of medical devices and instruments, but also the main stakeholders. It was imperative in identifying what connections were successful, and where there were opportunities for improvement or redirection.
User | medical professional
A medical professional is any medically trained individual who conducts medical examinations to diagnose or advise patients. Most commonly, an obstetrician and/or gynecologist would be conducting pelvic exams.
Stakeholder | uterus-haver
Any person that biologically has a vagina, cervix, and uterus, regardless of self-definition, is a valued stakeholder for vaginal and cervical health exams. The typical age for general pelvic exams are between the ages of 18-40 years old.
emotional efficacy *
A successful medical procedure caused by a product adequately conveying emotion or empathy to a patient
* The meaning of this term has been used singularly towards the focus of women’s behavior about health procedures, and does not necessarily comply with alternative definitions of emotional efficacy seen outside of this webiste.
User Research
Most women’s medical products follow a similar trend in materials, shapes, and finishes: soft to the touch, natural tones, and rounded edges. All of these attributes are used (1) to entice women to use the products, and (2) to ease the use of it.
Similarly, medical instruments that are interfacing a conscious patient should have a look and feel that is informative of its function, yet elegant and non-threatening in its visual appeal.
I wanted to find out how women connected the form language of an instrument to the activity in a procedure.
Survey sample size: 32 women
clinical efficacy
An endocervical instrument that incurs a higher specimen yield while maintaining form and ergonomics
prototyping
The tip
Alternative tip designs were formulated as a round or cylindrical shape compared to scraping with a flat paddle shape to cultivate cells. A rounded form mimics the annular anatomy from which you extract the cells, and also mimics the form of other successful women’s products.
The handle
The current handles for specimen collecting instruments are not cohesive, and do not incorporate the subtle dexterity needed within the palm and the fingers. Round and undulating forms were physically and digitally prototyped to test grip performance and improvement in accuracy when being used by various hand sizes.
The final form was a simple 3d printed two-peak curve made from UV PLA plastic. The material was rigid enough to maintain strength, but offered a bit of flex as it has a long and skinny shaft for when the OBGYN is turning the handle to swab the inside of the cervix.
