Once our team created our medium-fidelity prototype, we moved to testing with this prototype.

Our first round of testing was at Open Studio, where we asked members of our studio who menstruate who interact with our prototype. We laid our three drawers out side by side and asked users to read each label, take a look at each drawer, and then tell us which they would be drawn to and why. One team member facilitated dialogue with the user, while another team member took notes.

 

We were able to rapidly iterate and make edits to our prototype as we received feedback. For example, we received feedback that the level of internal organization/division within the drawers was impacting choices, so we created dividers for each drawer to make the prototypes consistent.

 

 

To expand past the studio, for our next round of testing we decided to perform a similar test within the RMC. Our community partner, Period at Rice/BCM happened to be hosting a week long “Period Week,” including tabling events. We joined a letter writing tabling event with our prototype and conducted our test again. From these rounds of testing we were able to collect valuable feedback on our prototypes. However, we were concerned about our low sample size, and the conflicting feedback we were receiving from our in person users. Additionally, we wanted to see how our prototype functioned while left alone. As such, we decided to leave the prototype by itself in the bathroom atrium hallway of the RMC, with a sign linking to a survey for feedback on the prototype. To increase our sample size, we also distributed the survey digitally with pictures of the prototype, which served as a proxy for direct interaction.