Note: This post includes content about sexual trauma.

This is the first in a series of posts about Narrative Objects: physical artifacts — from the speculative to the functional — that tell new stories about the world we live in.

Sexual Healing is a collection of sensory objects for people who experience sexual problems after a traumatic experience, focusing on individual agency and the reclamation of pleasure, rather than clinical treatment. These objects are meant to be functional at the individual level, and also serve a broader purpose of changing the way we collectively talk about sexual trauma and healing. I was lucky enough to chat with Nienke Helder, the main designer behind the project, about the public narratives she hopes to change, the challenges of inviting people to engage in participatory design processes that involve sensitive and traumatic topics, and the importance of invoking joy and play, even for such a difficult issue.

Over the past several years, my own work has been shaped in part by a fascination with design that involves taboo, stigmatized, and marginalized topics — particularly those topics that relate to female bodies and our collective discomfort around talking about the various fluids that they might produce. Most recently, I worked with a wonderful team of women to bring together a diverse community to hack technology, policy, and systems in support of breastfeeding parents and their babies. We produced a series of hackathons (and a policy summit) called “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck!” in 2014, and again in 2018. Rallying designers and technologists around developing new ways to support people who breastfeed was initially a difficult feat, and our design process had to accommodate that — candid conversation about the stigmatized topics of breasts and breastmilk made some people uncomfortable, and breastfeeding is not a topic typically seen as worthy of innovation and investment. One of our key strategies was to use humor, joy, and play to create pathways for people to sidestep stigma or awkwardness in order to take part in conversations around breastmilk, as well as to engage in the often uncomfortable work of confronting issues of racial and socioeconomic inequity that influences who does and does not receive support to breastfeed in the United States. We also conducted interviews with breastfeeding people around the country in order to produce a book of stories — called “Speaking Our Truths: 27 Stories of What It’s Really Like to Breastfeed and Pump in the United States” — that helped shine light on a topic that is rarely spoken about publicly.

In addition to being subject to stigma and marginalization, sexual trauma is an extremely sensitive and deeply personal issue, which required Nienke to take extra care in the design process for her object collection. While Sexual Healing began as her thesis project at Design Academy Eindhoven, Nienke has recently begun to put new versions of her original prototypes into production. I’ve long been inspired by this project — not only are the artifacts beautiful and functional, but they also offer alternative narratives about how we might approach sexual trauma as a society. Through her objects, Nienke argues that what has historically been treated as a medical and physical issue should also be explored with a goal of centering emotion and even pleasure.

Each object in the collection has a different function, intended as a set to bring multiple complex issues into view:

Brush
Serves to get used to touch. For those who are looking for a ‘gateway’ to direct skin contact, it helps to tickle yourself. It also serves as an invitation to involve your partner into the process, and you can use it as a tool to research what arouses you.

Mirror
Helps you to get to know your body. It lights up in the dark, so you can discover your body in a non-confronting way. The theory behind it is based on a research that shows that regularly looking at your vulva will increase your body positivity.

Stone
Works with a breathing sensor to guide you in the relaxing process. With a simple form of bio-feedback, the object communicates when you respond with tension and helps you to get back at ease, which is very important during sex. This object is a non-invasive way of measuring the tension in your abdomen, which helps you control your pelvic muscles as well.

Pelvic Sensor
As a next step, the ‘Pelvic sensor’ helps you to understand what happens in the pelvic floor. It shows you how you can relax enough in an ‘intimate’ situation to experience it with pleasure.

These objects represent a very different approach to sexual trauma, which is often treated as a clinical problem. People who experience sexual trauma may have difficulty relaxing, being touched, experiencing penetration, controlling pelvic floor contractions, or having an orgasm. These are often dubbed “sexual dysfunctions,” and can also be experienced by people who have not experienced sexual trauma. Many current treatments for these issues focus on treating physical manifestations of trauma, and people may be pointed towards physical therapy or even medication (for example, to increase libido or to reduce vaginal pain). Clinical therapy, (for example, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, which involves developing skills related to emotional regulation and coping) is also an approach doctors may recommend. Each of these solutions, even those that focus on the mental and emotional dimension of embodied issues, take place in a medical context — in physical therapy offices, on exam tables, and at the pharmacy. Often missing from the conversation about sexual trauma is an explicit concern for an individual’s sexual pleasure; rarely does the medical approach focus on recovering an individual’s ability to approach their sexuality with fun, joy, and play.

Nienke’s thinking on these topics began with her own personal experience finding it difficult to enjoy sex and intimacy after a sexual assault. After her assault, penetrative sex was painful, and she saw a variety of different doctors to help address the issue. Some of her treatments included physical therapy, as well as a painkiller injected into her vagina (while five male medical students looked on). None of these approaches helped her reclaim her ability to enjoy sex and intimacy, and eventually Nienke’s doctors told her nothing more could be done.

Nienke grew frustrated with this failure of imagination. “What we know about female sexual health is so behind compared to other fields of research,” she told me, “When I was still a patient, I heard so often that there was no solution and that I had to find a way to accept that. At some point I thought — the fact that you don’t have a solution, doesn’t mean there isn’t one (or more) at all. We just didn’t try hard enough yet.”

Motivated by her own frustration, and knowing that there are a multitude of other experiences people have with sexual dysfunction, Nienke decided to conduct further research. She contacted the doctors who treated her, and she also began to pull together a group of women to help her begin a design exploration around sexual healing. “Finding women as experts by experience was a bit more tricky [than recruiting medical experts],” she said. “I knew of some women who had dealt with similar issues, but not all of them felt comfortable working with me.”

In addition to the challenge of finding people to engage in participatory design processes that involve sensitive and traumatic topics, it can be difficult to set the frame for a new project and figure out methods for inviting participation. “The first time we met,” Nienke says “I realized that it’s very difficult to ask for input when there is nothing there yet…So I started with basing things on my own experiences, preferences, and assumptions and then provided that information as a starting point each time we met up. They then could say whether they agreed with my standpoints or not, if they liked the same colors, materials, ideas, approaches, etc. As soon as the concept slowly started to evolve, their input became much more in depth.” Nienke’s personal experiences and willingness to give form to her assumptions and ask for feedback allowed her to create a set of objects that ultimately serve a variety of needs beyond her own: “I was very used to getting feedback on my work from my tutors and fellow design students, who instantly go crazy with input if you only give them one sketch…In the design field I think sometimes we have a tendency to design things for other designers, but of course that should never be the point. Working so closely together with these women and the medical field was really refreshing.” Open-ended conversations can be difficult, and it is often the role of a designer to help people’s ideas take form, and to use feedback on these forms as a way of continuing an ongoing conversation.

Nienke’s objects are both functional and symbolic — and their symbolic nature tends to invite conversation. Nienke spoke about the unexpected challenge of producing objects that invite others to share their own personal narratives: “Sometimes at exhibitions, people start sharing their personal stories, which is at times a bit overwhelming, because I’m not a therapist, so I’m always a bit afraid to say something stupid, but I also feel really honored that the project brings out those stories, and that people feel welcome to share them.”

Nienke believes the playfulness of her objects to be key to their usefulness to people and to their ability to help change narratives around sexual trauma: “Fun, joy and pleasure are so important to this project because it’s all about respecting your own needs and listening to your body…why have sex if you don’t enjoy it? It should never be a mandatory activity. It’s so great if you learn to understand what you like, and amazing if you find ways to communicate this with a partner. To me, that’s a wonderful way of self-respect.”

As with our efforts to “Make the Breast Pump Not Suck!,” Nienke considers her project to be in dialogue with contemporary political issues, and believes that leveraging media attention around the designs themselves can be a way of changing the conversation around sexual trauma and healing. Of the project, Nienke says: “Of course, I do this from a feminist standpoint…After the storm of media attention connected to #metoo, I realized that I can use this project as a tool to bring awareness to this topic. By being the designer and expert by experience, the project becomes a sort of platform for other stories as well.”

This is the first in a series of articles I will be writing about Narrative Objects: physical artifacts — from the speculative to the functional — that tell new stories about the world we live in.

As I explore the worlds of Narrative Objects, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to get in touch and share examples of objects you’ve encountered (or created!).

In our lab at the MIT Center for Civic Media, much of our work centers around broadening participation in technology design (for example, the Make the Breast Pump Not Suck project). Lately, in collaboration with the MIT Open Ocean Initiative, we have also been thinking about how to broaden participation in scientific discovery. Traditionally, ocean exploration is done by those with formal degrees and access to costly equipment, but in order to fully explore and understand our vast oceans, we need to make it possible for new communities to join this effort.

There is inequity at play when we consider how scientific knowledge is distributed. 70% of nations have deep-sea environments within their maritime zones, yet only 15% of nations have the resources necessary to actually explore what is down in the deep. This can lead to exploitation by numerous industries (e.g. oil and gas, offshore energy, deep sea mining, fishing, etc.), poor resource management decisions, and missed opportunities to make use of undiscovered resources that will support life on land.

Using participatory design approaches, we’re working with the Open Ocean Initiative, National Geographic, and the University of the West Indies on a pilot project to develop training programs for researchers in the nations of Kiribati and Trinidad & Tobago. This August, I joined Diva Amon, Katy Croff Bell, and Alan Turchik in Trinidad & Tobago to explore opportunities for participatory ocean exploration. As part of the pilot phase of My Deep Sea, My Backyard, young researchers are learning how to use low-cost deep-sea drop cameras and teaching their peers how to use them, with the goal of building lasting in-country capacity and passion for exploration.

Our trip began with a large convening organized by Diva — bringing together scientists, engineers, government officials, energy industry stakeholders, conservationists, artists, and students — for a day full of talks about the deep ocean and technologies for exploration, as well as a participatory workshop on future opportunities to better understand the deep sea regions of Trinidad & Tobago. Following the workshop, we held a smaller 3-day workshop to train young researchers how to use the National Geographic low-cost deep-sea drop cameras.

During some of the down-time between training (and waiting for boats to arrive!), we had the opportunity to interview several of the people who participated in the workshop about what motivated them to spend a week with us learning about the deep sea. Our participants had diverse interests, but a shared passion for exploration:

Hannah Lochan, a plant and marine biology student, told us about how she developed an interest in the ocean through a research project she did as an undergraduate. She and her fellow classmates developed fieldwork skills by studying the distribution of hard and soft coral in the Salybia Beach reef of Trinidad. “I’m excited to see how deep we can go with the DropCam!” Hannah told us, explaining her motivations for exploring the deep sea in addition to coastal environments, “We really have no idea what’s out there!”

Raquel Khan Ali, a marine biology and ecology student, told us she’s been drawn to the water ever since she was a child. “I want to know what’s out there,” she said, “things I can’t see, things I really can’t see.” She also described a lack of awareness about career opportunities related to the oceans, and told us how important it is that researchers like Diva Amon — the Trinidadian deep-sea biologist leading My Deep Sea, My Backyard — are bringing knowledge back to Trinidad to motivate more people to explore their own backyards.

Laura-Ashley Henderson, also a marine biology and ecology student, is excited by the opportunity to share research findings from the DropCam more broadly in Trinidad. “Not as many people go to the beach in Trinidad as one may think, they are not as interested as you may expect for an islander,” she told us, “whatever we find out there, I hope it’s interesting enough to get people excited about the ocean,” adding that she wanted more people to begin to see ocean technology and exploration as a possible career path.

Thera Edwards, a Map Curator from the Department of Geography and Geology at the UWI Mona Campus, Jamaica and technical advisor to the Jamaica Conservation and Development Trust, told us about her interest in managing the ocean data that researchers will collect: “it’s not the sexy part, but it’s important…without organizing the data and making it useful, how does anything else happen?” She also described how DropCams and ROVs could help demystify the ocean and make it more accessible: “Before this, ocean exploration seemed like a scary ‘Jacques Cousteau, diving bell, risky thing’…but now there are pieces of equipment that enable you to get information remotely in a relatively safe way.”

Our team is currently synthesizing learnings from this pilot project (along with its sister effort in Kiribati, led by Randi Rotjan and Brian Kennedy) and exploring opportunities to expand the work. A core component of this project is to promote public understanding of and interest in the deep sea — as the project grows, we plan to work with our partners in each country to co-design educational and outreach strategies to include the broader public in ocean exploration efforts. We are also investigating opportunities for the co-design of easy-to-use and accessible technologies for this purpose, including software to facilitate collaborative data analysis, new sensors and sample collection tools, and much more.

If you’d like to learn more about our journey, check out our expedition report on National Geographic OpenExplorer, and our project page on the MIT Media Lab website. This project is supported by the IDB and the National Geographic Society — thank you for making this work possible!

Putting together a syllabus for an 8-day crash course in Industrial Design was a big challenge! We wanted to introduce students to: 1) the process and culture of industrial design (creating a studio environment, sketching and iteration, critique, putting together a process book and portfolio), 2) how design functions as a communication tool (how design shapes society and vice versa, how form conveys emotion, best practices for usability), and 3) hands-on technical and craft skills (prototyping with foam-core and paper, sculpting, 3D modeling and rendering, electronics prototyping, photography). If it sounds like a lot to cover, it was! But our students were totally game for the challenge and together we played, learned, and experimented over 8 intense days.

Many of the activities in the course were adapted from assignments developed by my amazing instructors at Massachusetts College of Art and Design (thanks in particular to Judith Anderson & Frank Criscione!) The “Adjective Project” served as an anchor throughout the week. For this project, students were assigned an adjective and asked to incorporate the moods, emotions, and formal qualities conveyed by each word into a series of iterative design exercises. Students also kept a sketchbook for the week — in addition to each assignment, they completed 5 pages of sketching each night (new ideas for products, observational drawings, UI sketching, or form studies).

Day 1 – Introduction to Industrial Design: We kicked off the experience with “Trash Club,” a social event I like to host in Boston (more on that in a future post!). Trash Club is like a potluck for materials — everyone brings something to share, and together we spend the day creating objects and prototypes to develop our hand-craft skills and experiment with new ways of working across unusual materials. We ended the class with a group critique to introduce how to give and recieve constructive feedback from others.

Day 2 – Sketching & Moodboards: We emphasized the utility of sketching as both a thinking and communication tool — how a designer might use it just for themselves to think through problems and opportunities, or as a tool to persuade and educate others. On this day, we kicked off the Adjective Project and assigned students one of five words: angry, grieving, confident, shy, and nurturing (okay…some of these are verbs). After students received their words, they put together moodboards to develop their own personal interpretation of the word and gather inspiration.

Day 3 – 3D Prototyping & Form Studies: On the third day, we continued the theme of sketching, but this time in 3D. Students used clay to develop a series of “sketch models” to create a sculpture that conveyed their Adjective concept. We pushed students to create abstract forms versus literal interpretations (e.g. instead of a parent holding a baby to convey “nurturing”, what might you pull from that relationship between two bodies to make it less representational?). We had a series of small critiques, where students who shared the same word came together in working groups to get feedback from each other about what was successful and less successful about the design. Then, we ended with a larger group critique where students from different groups tried to guess each others’ words based on the formal qualities of each sculpture.

Day 4 – 3D Modeling I: The next two days were devoted to learning technical skills of 3D modeling (using Fusion 360) and introducing the process of iterative design. After a brief introduction to the software and some short exercises (making a paperclip, making an egg cup, making a cube inside a cube), we asked students to refine their abstract forms from the previous day based on critique, and translate them into digital models. These introductory lessons barely scratched the surface of 3D modeling, and we were blown away by the students’ enthusiasm and ability to pick up the skills needed to model their (sometimes very complicated) forms in the software.

Day 5 – 3D Modeling II: On the second day of 3D modeling, we asked students to translate the formal qualities of their sculptures into a functional product (e.g. a lamp, an office supply, a chair, or a video game controller). Instead of just taking the form from the previous day and adding functional elements to it, our shared goal was to identify specific formal elements from the sculpture to create a visual language that could then be applied to functional forms. Students went back to the drawing board with sketching on paper, and created ideas for new products. The mashups were phenomenal — students created grieving staplers, shy lamps, confident chairs, angry video game controllers, and more. We discussed that perhaps we would never as designers be called on to create a grieving stapler, but developing a mastery of form and an understanding of how form communicates emotion will allow us to thoughtfully make choices about how our designs make people feel.

Day 6 – Introduction to Programming & Arduino: Today we shifted gears from the Adjective Project and moved into experimenting with physical computing using the Arduino platform. Students were introduced to programming, inputs/outputs with a variety of sensors, and worked in peer-teaching teams to complete a series of short exercises.

Day 7 – User Interface Design & Usability Testing: Because Industrial Design often blends physical objects with screen-based interactions, we introduced students to UX and UI design. After a short introduction to best practices and examples of successful and unsuccessful interface design, we asked students to create paper prototypes of a wellness app (e.g. fitness, meditation, eating) or another concept of their choosing. After sketching their ideas, students tested their paper prototypes with each other, made changes to their designs, and then developed a high-fidelity mockup using Illustrator, Photoshop, or the Sketch app.

Day 8 – Portfolios, Storytelling, & Product Photography: Students did a LOT of work this week, and we wanted them to be able to take home an artifact to demonstrate both their process and the results of their various experiments. Building on the digital design skills they learned from the previous class on UI/UX, students learned about layout, hierarchy, and typography to create a portfolio. We also set up a photo studio with professional lighting (thanks AV team!) so they could take compelling shots of their work to include in their portfolios.

Day 9 & 10 – After the intense eight-day class, our students participated in a two-day hackathon with the rest of the TechX students on mixed teams. It was so exciting to see them embedded in other teams as design experts and using the tools they learned throughout the week to work with others to create functional prototypes. After a science-fair style judging session, the top ten groups shared a formal presentation on stage.

Together over the course of the week, our students built a creative, supportive, and joyful community. It was an amazing experience — below are some photos from the very fun, very full week! If you’d like to use any of our resources or materials, feel free to get in touch :)

Cross-posted to my personal blog.

Comic-Con was a great opportunity to share the research we do at the Media Lab outside of traditional academic venues. On the panel with me was Danielle Wood (head of the Space Enabled research group), Katy Croff Bell (head of the Open Ocean Initiative), and Selam Gano (an MIT grad who co-directed an amazing video inspired by Riri Williams and the real-life superheroes we have on campus). The panel was moderated by Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut and member of the Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative. Our discussion was very wide-ranging — we talked about the relationship between speculative fiction and our research, visions for more inclusive technology design processes, exploring the deep sea, advancing social justice on earth through space technology, and the comics and science fiction that inspire us to build a better future.

I shared a few storytelling projects I’ve worked on at the Lab — Sensory Fiction and FOLD — as well as our efforts with the Breast Pump Hackathon to bring together a diverse community to hack technology, policy, and more in support of breastfeeding parents and babies. My work at the Media Lab focuses on transforming the culture of technology innovation to be more inclusive and equitable, and I see a similar transformation happening in the world of comics, which is flourishing with new stories told from a wider spectrum of perspectives than ever before.

Beyond the panel, Comic-Con was a great experience. My sister (and fellow comics-nerd) Josephine Hoy joined me, and we had a blast walking around, learning about new comics, and checking out all of the cosplay. For the panel, I decided to dress up as Shade the Changing Girl, the main character from one of my favorite comics. After the panel, I had the opportunity to meet Marley Zarcone, the artist behind Shade, and Mags Visaggio, the writer of Eternity Girl, another comic I am currently in love with. It was a true fangirl moment to meet the creators of two comics that really inspire me and speak to important parts of my emotional world and identity.

Some of my other favorite comics are Alan Moore’s run of Swamp Thing, Tank Girl, Paper Girls, Mother Panic, Abbott, Black Cloud, Godshaper, Monstress, Long Lost, Snotgirl, the Archie reboots…and many more. I guess I’ve got a bad comics habit…I can frequently be found wandering around Comicazi, an amazing and super-friendly comics shop/community in Somerville where I pick up my weekly subscriptions! I’m always looking for recommendations — if you’ve got any suggestions, send them my way 😊