Drink Aware
DrinkAware were looking to explore, through user centred research and design, how they could ensure their digital drink tools worked for gender diverse audiences.
This project was delivered as a freelance project with 2CV leading the work.
Understanding the problem.
Every problem is different when it comes to designing for gender diverse audiences, there is no ‘one way to do it’. This area was particularly interesting as it had a medical aspect to it due to alcohol affecting male and female bodies differently. As a team we spent time upfront understanding the science behind the difference while digging into why each tool needed to know people’s sex and/or gender. Sadly we uncovered a lack of research into the effects of alcohol on trans people’s bodies. This being a gap Drink Aware hope to fill in future.
User research.
2CV planned and delivered in-depth user research with 18 people who identified as gender diverse including trans men and women and non-binary folks. This research involved a pre-task to use a selection of digital health tools before participating in a remote interview. Joy acted as a subject matter expert during this phase, guiding the process to ensure the research would gather actionable insight that would inform the upcoming design phase. Emma sat in the research sessions sketching ideas live.
Design.
The research found 4 key themes:
Gender-diverse populations know a person’s gender and sex can differ, often online tools conflate the two and people expect this
Biological sex can mean different things for different participants, and it can be triggering for people to talk and think about
There’s a limited understanding of how sex can affect their alcohol risk which can lead participants to question the tools’ accuracy and credibility
There is a desire to receive information and support tailored to gender-diverse participants’ identity and needs
With these findings in mind we redesigned key pages within the tools focusing on things like how we asked for people’s sex/gender, how we explained why we were asking and how we signposted for further support.
We ran 3 testing sessions with 2-3 participants in each session. We iterated the designs between each session, refining our thinking based on the feedback of users. We also ran a CIS gender group to test our thinking and ensure we were getting the balance right.
Implementation.
DrinkAware are currently working through a wider, more strategic, redesign of their suite of tools and will be feeding these learnings and recommendations into that work rather than directly implementing the changes on the current tools.
DrinkAware are also committed to furthering research and understanding in this space with a desire to provide more information and support for gender diverse audiences in future.