Brazen
The Problem: How do you address stigmatized, but ubiquitous menstrual issues like PMS and period pain that affect more than 80% of reproductive aged women?
The Solution: By being Brazen. We built a consumer brand that women can trust throughout their reproductive lifecycle. By grounding our business in research and a strong, modern brand, we stand out in a crowded marketplace of half-measures and insufficient solutions. We’ve created a line of customized supplements to target specific patterns of symptoms and built an online program that does more than track your period — it actually fixes it.
My Role: Head of Product
Personalized solutions to global problems
Understanding how to serve our customers meant understanding the global context of the problem we were trying to solve, but also understanding what made each one of our customers tick. We synthesized census data, research from the National Institutes of Health, and existing industry data to paint a picture of a national health crisis that has been largely ignored. With more than 80% of women experiencing moderate to severe period problems, we set out to examine how these problems were currently being solved. The answer: they weren’t.
We investigated how people with periods managed their symptoms with existing digital solutions, over-the-counter medications, and even homespun remedies from mom or grandma. Developing a broad research-based understanding of our problem allowed us to identify opportunities for differentiation and steered development direction.
We followed high-level research with problem interviews to build a deep personal understanding of how menstrual problems affected women on a daily basis. These interviews allowed us to build true-to-life personas and identify key demographics that didn’t just want, but needed our services. Our personas acted as guide posts throughout the design process and allowed us to anticipate and design for problems and edge cases before we started user testing.
Design process
My process begins with identifying key feature sets that our primary personas will rely on to achieve their goals, not just within the product, but in their lives. Once these feature sets have been validated with key stakeholders, I turn to pen and paper for rapid prototyping and brainstorming sessions with product, marketing, content, and business teams. This process creates buy-in and excitement across our organization as we shepherd our key features along and get valuable feedback on the business case for our product.
After initial brainstorming, lo-fi digital prototyping creates a system for another round or problem interviews where our team proposes a solution. Not only does this generate valuable feedback, but it identifies hand raisers for early testing. User testing at this stage is key to making sure that needs are being met and identifies areas of potential confusion or frustration. This process also allows our dev team to being to scope the project, investigate functionality, document features, and allocate resources.
Once our lo-fi system has been validated, hi-fi designs are tested as we integrate brand identity into our products.
Visual Identity
Product research informs more than just product design. During our user interviews, we found that users were frequently turned off by products that focused stereotypically feminine themes (pink and flowery). This was especially true of gender expansive or non-binary people with periods that felt largely ignored by current products. This informed our design process, not just for our technology product, but also for our web properties and CPG products.
Brazen means acting with strength while overcoming something difficult or shameful. Our goal is for people with periods everywhere to be open, honest and real about what they are going through, to be loud and relentless about ending the stigma surrounding period talk. We want women to feel proud and energized by our brand.
The Brazen App is currently in development. Website will be built on Wordpress and will be available at foreverbrazen.com. CPG are also currently in production.