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Let's get deep. Like really deep.
Proud to announce, Use Your Mouth just won a Red Dot Award for brand and communication category - considered one of the most prestigious awards in the product design industry.
Ever felt shame, guilt or had negative feelings related to sex or your sexual experiences? You are not alone. Millions of people face the same issues, every single day. A crippling anxiety around something as natural as their biological needs. There is a need to break the stigma around sex and to help people express themselves freely and confidently.
Course
Perceptual and Cognitive Human Factors
My Roles
Interaction Lead, UX Strategist, UI Designer, UX Researcher
Team Members
Arjun Gupta,
Lara Federspiel,
Seth Stormberger,
Khushi Bhatt
Timeline
10 Weeks
My Role
As the interaction lead for this project, I lead the development of the app and product prototypes, analyzing and understanding the physical and digital ergonomics of the experience of using our solution. In the early stage of the project I also helped with the topic research, competitive analysis leading into conceptualization and development of the solution and concluding by working on its branding and marketing aspects.
The Challenge
Due to negative conversations and lack of education about sex and pleasure, people don't have the space to embody, explore, express and learn about their sexuality and pleasure without fear of judgment or shame.
We realized that lackluster and misinformative sex education has followed people, including ourselves, into their adulthood and is negatively impacting their lives. People desperately want to talk about this topic but don’t know how to express themselves, leading to frustration and feelings of self hatred.
How Might We?
How Might We facilitate healthy and honest conversations and encourage emotional vulnerability between people regarding sex and replace unhealthy mindsets and misconceptions with positive and healthy sex education?
presenting
Introduction
Use Your Mouth is an interactive game that aims to start fun and healthy conversations about sex with the intention of normalizing the extremely taboo topic and breaking the stigma around sex and sexuality. Use Your Mouth brings awareness and battles misconceptions seeded by negativity around sex, by encouraging hilarious conversations with friends, family, and even strangers!
Use Your Mouth Game Disk
The Use your mouth disk is the game board that displays conversation-starting prompts as well as acts as a fact checker for information.
It offers audio-visual and tactile functions that sense haptic input from players regarding heart rate, body temperature, and pressure of each player to determine their emotions of excitement or nervousness and transforms this information into visual stimuli in the form of a colorful glowing halo.
The display shows game insights after the game has ended to reflect on the conversation. Use Your Mouth’s audio input picks up on tone and key words in the player's conversation during the game to develop generative AI-based art unique to these conversations. The disk’s audio-visual function also offers fact-checking when misconceptions are brought into conversation.
Features
Keeps you on your toes
Mini Games
Use Your Mouth wants to keep players on their toes! We start with an ice breaker, such as "describe your perfect day or what is your best memory," and build up the intensity the more questions we get through.
Hot Seat
While playing Use Your Mouth groups may be thrown into a minigame at random, such as 60-second hot seat, to make the conversations spark up and memorable.
Hot Seat
Two truths and a Lie
While playing Use Your Mouth groups may be thrown into a minigame at random, such as Two Truths and a Lie, to make the conversations spicy and memorable.
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Emotion Tracking
The disk will highlight green when all the players are comfortable and are enjoying the prompts in the game.
“Haha this is going well”
If any player is nervous or hesitant at any prompt, the disk will turn yellow, prompting other players to initiate an open conversation and make the player comfortable.
“Uh.. I dont know...”
In a situation, when a prompt makes any player uncomfortable the disk will turn red, indicating all players to skip the question.
“Oh nah... I’ll pass”
The disk knows it all
The disk's holistic and unbiased knowledge of everything related to sex can alert and guide the conversation to address misconceptions brought up in conversation using the built-in audio-visual system. The disk does not record or save the conversation; instead recognizes tone and keywords. Players get an option to turn off voice recognition.
Fact Checking
Analytical Conversations
Game Insights
As soon as the game "CLIMAXES," the players will be presented with game insight run-through on the disk where they can see an intelligent analysis of the game stats. The most discussed question, The question with most emotion fluctuations, and more.
Use Your Mouth App
The UYM App is a great companion to the disk as it provides the user ease of setting and controlling the game on their fingertips
It also contains tutorials and an onboarding that helps players understand how the game works and ask for help if they need it. It’s simple, choose the number of players and topics in your disk and get started!!!
Players' conversation generates beautiful pieces of AI art. Save it to the camera roll, share it with friends, and curate a whole gallery of these unique pieces, knowing that behind each one, there is a story.
Generative Art
Endless Conversation
As players set up their game, their group can choose the topics they are interested in talking about. Through a series of these fun prompts, the disk guides the players to open up about their sex lives.
How to play
Use Your mouth?
Simply Setup your Use Your Mouth account
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And learn through our simple step by step walkthrough of the game
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Turn on your disk and pair it via bluetooth.
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Once paired, set up your game by selecting the no. of players
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Then, choose the topics you would like to discuss or talk about
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The disk would glow to prompt everyone to place their hands on the disk
And let the games begin : )
And let the games begin : )
Game begins with some icebreakerer questions
Disk visualizes user emotions based on biometric tracking
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During the game, players can rotate the panel clockwise to change questions
Value Proposition
During the Game, players can add anonymous questions
After the game ends, the disk will analyse and process the game history and produce amazing insights from the game
Simultaneously, on the app you can view and share the art that was generated throughout the game based on the conversation.
Value Proposition
Use your mouth takes on the responsibility to properly educate, create confidence, neutralize conversation, and include everyone in the conversation about sex. With UYM, we hope to remove shame and judgment spawning from sexual negativity and embrace the diversity of sexual expression by promoting and celebrating the idea and conversation around it.
Impact of Use Your Mouth
This project was deep and personal to all of our team members as, through the journey of its development, all the team members got a lot more comfortable and open minded around the topic of sex. Use Your Mouth not only impacted us as a team, but also became the pioneer and example for other student teams in our college to build project and solutions around this topic, which we feel was our ultimate success.
My Experience
Coming from a culture and society where sex education itself is not a popular trend, let alone discussing sex in normal discourse, this project had a massive impact on me. Initially I was skeptical about the need and the effect an experience like this would have on people, but working on it itself helped me learn about the sheer merits of casual conversation, it helped me burst major myths and misconceptions I always had. This project will always hold a special place in my life, and I wish we can actually convert this into something valuable.
Our Process
Discover
Discover
What is the problem?
Sex is a topic that has been taboo for many years. This has lead to unhealthy emotions like shame and guilt within people about sex and their relationship with it.
Why is the problem relevant?
Due to negative conversations about sex and pleasure, people don't have space to embody, explore, and learn about their sexuality and pleasure without fear of judgment or shame.
Sexual guilt is a negative emotional response associated with the feeling of anxiety, guilt or shame in relation to sexual activity.
Sex negativity assumes sex is dirty, dangerous, disgusting, unnatural, harmful, risky etc...
Sexual guilt is a negative emotional response associated with the feeling of anxiety, guilt or shame in relation to sexual activity.
Research Methods
We wanted to understand what sex means to people and why is it such a taboo subject in our society. Furthermore, how this connotations towards talking about sex has impacted their life and what do they wish should be changed around it?
We wanted to know strategies people use to alleviate sexual stigmas, their thoughts on sex positivity, and where they see the biggest pitfalls of sex education.
Secondary Research
Multiple Research papers, theories and articles about sexual guilt, negativity and competence.
We wanted to learn about how having sex with an immature mindset can lead to long term damaging effects on the psyche of young adults.
User Surveys
Multiple Research papers, theories and articles about sexual guilt, negativity and competence.
We wanted to take a deep dive into people’s mindsets and understanding about sex, by talking about their journeys, experiences and feelings revolving around it.
User & SME Interview
Multiple Research papers, theories and articles about sexual guilt, negativity and competence.
We wanted to have an extremely open and vulnerable conversation with people to get the ugly and nasty data. We wanted to not hold out so we chose a group that was close.
Focus Groups
Multiple Research papers, theories and articles about sexual guilt, negativity and competence.
Define
Define
Data Synthesis
946
Data Points
224
Sentiments
54
Themes
14
Insights
What we learnt?
"We need to tell people how damn normal they are"
- Erica Smith, Creator of Purity School DropOut
Erica Smith (SME Interview), sex educator and entrepreneur, summed up our research findings very elegantly. The most crucial piece of information we learned from research was the understanding importance of reassuring people that their sexual behaviors and feelings are completely normal.
Insight One
People feel that sex education should be a fundamental part of their lives and should be taught fun, impactful, and memorable.
Insight Two
The sexual experience is vast, and it is essential to reassure people that whatever they are experiencing is likely wholly normal.
Insight Three
People want to normalize straightforward conversations about their sexual experiences and identity and learn from their own experiences and others.
Insight Two
People feel that talking to their loved ones about sex can be helpful, but these conversations are awkward and difficult to materialize.
Target Audience
17-25 years old
All genders and sexualities
We found that individuals saw the most change in their exploration and view of sex after they experienced personal freedom from adults. People actively sought to explore their sexualities and began the journey of finding their true selves.
Moreover, we want to make sure they are educated and ready by targeting this age group that will become parents in the future or simply educate the next generations on sex and sex positivity.
User Personas
Meet Robin and Buzz
We used our two persona, Robin and Buzz, to generate situations that our ideas could improve. Robin is having trouble fitting in at college and is uncomfortable opening up about sex and her sexuality, while Buzz is sexually active yet feels empty after any sexual activity. How can our product improve their two very different situations?
How Might We?
How might we facilitate healthy and honest conversations and encourage emotional vulnerability between people regarding sex?
How might we replace unhealthy mindsets and misconceptions with positive and healthy sex education?
How might we help future parents create a more sex-positive environment and healthier upbringing for younger generations?
How might we uplift marginalized communities in the conversation of sex positivity?
Develop
Develop
Stake Holder Mapping
To map out the scope of the solution and find the area it can create the most impact we created a Stakeholder map for our target audience. We plotted a map for the amount of Influence vs. Involvement all these various stake holders have in our target user's life. Through this we realized for our solution to create an impact we need to cater into our user's direct and close circle.
Ideation Methods
We adopted multiple ideation strategies to get to the solution with the maximum impact. We ran through multiple rounds of crazy 8s, extensive mind mapping, and filling out concept boards. These activities generated over 80 unique ideas.
Impact vs Feasibility Map
To filter from over 80 unique ideas, we needed a way to evaluate them on the amount of impact it can create as well as it was equally important to keep in mind its feasibility. Thus we plotted all of our ideas on this map and the ideas that found a place in the core circle became our top priority concepts to work on.
Initial Concept
Round Table
After a lot of brainstorming and SWOT analysis of our core ideas, we proceeded with two concepts, out of which the one that seemed most promising was, Roundtable.
Roundtable is a collaboration focused experience that is designed to help create an open conversation around sex and promote sex positivity in a variety of different contexts.
What does it do?
Round table is fun interactive exeprience where:
1. A physical device (like a disk) sits in the center of the group, users will place their hands on the device to start the game.
2. The disk will prompt questions and monitor interactions and physiological cues, providing feedback based on the conversation and users’ emotions.
3. Users can select the type of conversation and topics they want to have by adjusting different modes for peers, parents, teachers, etc.
Why we went with Round Table?
From our research synthesis we found that people want a sexual education experience that requires an emotional connection and vulnerability, but in a more casual and informal manner.
Roundtable creates a way for our users to be able to learn from their experiences as well as others by being the middleman for conversation and, helping them creating more sex positive environments around them.
Cultural Probe
To build upon our hypothesis that people want to talk about sex and test the fundamental basis of our concept we took a fun activity out to the public.
We created a bunch of cards with question based prompts around the topic of sex. The idea was to understand how comfortable people are talking about the topic, how long can they keep up the conversation for and what are the topics that are most popular among them.
We also wanted to notice people's behavior while doing this activity in terms of the language and the tone they use, choice of words, and most importantly their body language.
17-25
Age Demographic
22
Participants
5
Topic Categories
Our Learnings
People are more comfortable talking about such personal topics in groups and love to bounce topics and stories off each other
People expect a continuous engagement about this topic to make it part of their daily life and culture and thereby removing the stigma from it
People also preferred to have the conversation in a more humorous and lighter tonality to avoid making the conversation too awkward and uncomfortable
Card Sorting
After the cultural probe, we created a rough Sitemap of our application and device to conduct a Card Sorting activity with users. It helped us further understand what language we wanted to in our product, as well as define our task flows and overall architecture of both the app and the product.
17-25
Age Demographic
11
Participants
Closed Cart Sort
Users organized predetermined names into categories
Open Cart Sort
Users had freedom to label sections and categories
Our Learnings
People loved the idea of having multiple topic options and personalization but offer personalization that enhances the game, but does not overwhelm the user.
Questions and topics worded in a fun way sparked the most interest, but we need to have a consistent language throughout the app and the physical disk
Changes we made
After getting the sense of direction about the content via culture probe and card sort, we developed our final information architecture map for the app and the product and get into app prototype development and get it ready to test it with our users to refine our solution as much as possible. This also led us to rebrand Roundtable to what became "Use Your Mouth". We realized to fit our concept and its essence, we need a more fun name and branding for our product.
Information Architecture Mapping
Lo-fi Development
With the lo-fi testing, our objective was to learn which features we should prioritize so that the experience dosen't become too overwhelming and confusing for our users. We created these 6 key wire flows to learn about how users feel navigating through the whole experience.
Onboarding
Connection
Game Setup
In Game
Game Analysis
Social Connections
17-25
Age Demographic
8
Participants
For our Lofi tests, we made our users execute our task flows, on the mobile app prototype where we had the onboarding, pre game, during game and post game task flows.
We also had the paper prototype on the side which was used as a placeholder for the physical disk.
Objectives
1. Is the app easy to navigate?
2. Do users understand how to play?
3. Are users able to set up games?
4. How do users react to switching between phone and disk?
5. Is the feature set effective in terms of being a solution?
Our Learnings
People found the app to have too many features at once, and hinted on removing the social feature
People also felt that the experience will be more interesting if we stick to only the play element and not focus on learning and teaching aspect
The onboarding and setup should be super simple and fun to interact with.
Mid-fi Development
Taking feedback from our lo-fi testing, we finalized our feature list and made our app flows more user friendly and and interactive. Working further we developed our Mid-Fi design prototype to finalize and lock in on the task flows and validate with our users. This time we also incorporated the disk prototype to test the physical and digital ergonomics of the experience.
Onboarding
Connection
Game Setup
In Game
Game Analysis
Profile
Our Learnings
People wanted the disk to be more interactive rather than just displaying prompts and the app to be for support
People wanted the onboarding experience to be intuitive and simple and with a low learning curve
Changes made
1. Made the onboarding short and more interactive for the user to learn the game setup and rules easily
2. Designed a more personalized experience for the user to setup the game as per the players' interest and comfort level by giving them a plethora of choices and topics
3. Prioritizing user privacy by giving them the option to choose the audio input on the disk
4. Making game insights more interesting with an objective to spark conversations and access in future to compare with previous sessions.
Hi-Fi Testing
After multiple rounds of user testing our concepts were refined down to curate the most user friendly experience. Getting into the final designs we worked on our branding guidelines and created the design system for our product. We also created a fully functional prototype to gather a group of people and let them play the game in a natural manner.
"I've never told anyone this before, BUT...."
-Hi-Fi user test participant
Final Testing Insights
Players absolutely loved the concept, and had a great 47 game session, which elicited laughter and secrets immediately
Emotional visualization and biometric tracking with personalized game insights seemed to be the favorite feature
Players love the spice added by different modes and were easily drawn into conversation by the icebreakers
SUS Evaluation
User Testing 1
B/ 74.5
User Testing 2
A/ 88.5
SUS Score
Deliver
Deliver
App Prototype
Physical Prototype
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