Integrated Product Development (IPD) is a rigorous 6 credit interdisciplinary design course. Each team developed a product that addressed the design challenge and “sold” it at a live trade show at Ross Business School. My team’s product, My Cycle, took 1st place.

Design Challenge

While advances in health have improved many lives, women across countries and social and economic groups still face gaps in care, information, and support—leading to poorer maternal outcomes. Emerging technologies can help close these gaps and enrich lives.

Specifications:

• Retail price < $100

• Proven practical feasibility through physical prototypes

• Target Demographic: Women of childbearing age 2022

Research

We interviewed five young adults, seven mothers, and one medical practitioner to learn about their struggles regarding their reproductive and/or menstrual health. We also conducted secondary research by reading academic papers, news articles, and blogs.

Key Pain Points

• Current period tracking apps can be inaccurate and don’t provide a holistic picture of what’s happening.

• Understanding how different factors like stress and energy relate to their menstrual cycle can be challenging.

• Using a menstrual cup can be messy.

• Staying consistent while using birth control can be challenging.

Ideation

Smart Pill Bottle

Our Focus: Basal Body Temperature

We focused on providing women with a holistic view of their health. We used basal body temperature (BBT) as our distinguishing tracking metric.

What is BBT?

BBT is your internal body temperature when your body is at complete rest (i.e. the moment you wake up). Though typically used to track ovulation and fertility, it’s a valuable metric that correlates to a woman’s stress, energy level, and mood during their cycle. A cost effective and intuitive solution of tracking BBT does not exist on the market today.

“I’m stressed a lot, I exercise a lot, I have mood swings, and lack energy all the time. I try to track my cycle using a period tracking app, but it’s never accurate and I never know what’s going on with my body.”

- Mia, age 20

My Cycle empowers women to understand how their BBT can be used to understand their menstrual cycle.

Our goals:

• Provide a simple and affordable way of tracking BBT.

• Help women understand how different factors in their menstrual cycle relate to one another using their body’s data

Credit: Samantha Greenhill

Prototyping

I used an Arduino development board and an off-the-shelf temperature sensor for my initial wired prototype. 

Initial “Works-Like” Prototype

I wanted the final looks-like prototype to be both wearable and wireless, so I soldered a smaller I2C digital temperature sensor to a battery powered Adafruit Bluetooth PCB. The chip communicates to the My Cycle app via Bluetooth. The circuitry housing and wrist strap were both 3D printed. 

I2C temperature sensor soldered to Adafruit microcontroller running Arduino code.

Final “Looks Like” Prototype

To give users an idea of what our product would look like, I 3D printed an insert for a FitBit strap. We assumed that the active technology in our “works-like” prototype could be condensed to this size or smaller if made at scale. 

Credit: Samantha Greenhill

Check out the product website my teammates made here.

Trade Show

We presented My Cycle at a mock trade show where passersby were given a hypothetical budget of $150 and five products to learn about and “purchase”. Our sale price was $45. Our cost of production was $9.50. I got to pitch our product to potential users and develop a cost model.