Mind Matters: Designing the Future of Women’s Health

Women’s health challenges are complex. From menstruation to menopause, physical symptoms often go together with stress, isolation, and psychological strains, yet these experiences remain largely unsupported. This article explores the value of empathy and design research to challenge assumptions, unveil unmet needs, and help build the future women deserve.

Menstruation, pregnancy, menopause – these are not just clinical milestones. They are deeply personal experiences shaped by biology, but also by identity, ethnicity, culture, relationships, and the broader social context.

And yet, within traditional healthcare systems, these pivotal stages in a woman’s life are too often approached through the lens of physical symptoms and managed with biomedical interventions.

In reality, women’s health challenges at these life stages are rarely one-dimensional. Physical symptoms often occur alongside emotional and mental strain, leading to feelings of isolation, stress, anxiety, and confusion. Too often, these experiences go unseen and unsupported, placing women’s overall wellbeing at risk. Without adequate care, a negative mind-body feedback loop can take hold, where untreated emotional distress exacerbates physical symptoms.

To better address these interconnected challenges, we must ask ourselves: How might we reframe our approach to women’s health so that both physical and emotional dimensions are thoroughly considered?

Uncovering Emotional Insights through Design Research

Design research can serve as a systematic, human-centred inquiry into the complex emotional dimensions of women’s health. While conventional health studies often rely on clinical data and standardised assessments, design research immerses itself in real-world contexts. It explores not only what is happening but also why it matters and how it impacts people’s lives.

Many design research tools and methods are attuned to identify hard-to-detect needs and emotional subtleties. Digital diaries for example allow women to record details of their experiences, often revealing emotions and triggers that they hadn’t noticed previously. Co-design workshops go a step further, enabling women with similar experiences to shape new solutions through guided facilitation. This process can often spark moments of self-discovery and generate touching human insights that can drive transformative change at scale.

Consider menopause in the workplace. Research has revealed how poor temperature regulation, inflexible work structures, and a lack of private space can significantly intensify the emotional and physical burden of menopausal symptoms. By using a mix of design research methods, researchers have uncovered actionable and impactful interventions, such as access to personal climate controls, quiet zones, and flexible scheduling. These changes have demonstrably improved wellbeing for women employees navigating the menopause.

These insights or solutions are not what you would get from standardised surveys or health questionnaires. They emerge through deep immersion, creative facilitation, and, most importantly, empathy.

The Value of Empathy

Empathy is not just a tool in design research; it is the foundation. It allows researchers to connect with what women are truly experiencing, even when those experiences are impossible to articulate verbally. Without empathy, we risk misunderstanding the root of the problem or, worse, missing it altogether.

According to the Women’s Health Strategy for England report, 84% of women reported feeling that their health concerns were not taken seriously and often dismissed by their healthcare professionals. Often, this is not due to a lack of medical knowledge, but a perceived lack of empathy, possibly stemming from heavy workloads and different views on illness. Understandable as that might be, the consequences are severe. When women patients feel unheard, they are less likely to speak up, reinforcing the systemic gaps in how women’s health is understood and addressed.

Design researchers are trained to ask more and listen better. Empathy in design research goes beyond being attentive. It means embedding oneself in the lived context of others, seeing experiences from their perspective, and tailoring research methods to individuals. It requires cultural sensitivity, ethical integrity, and emotional intelligence. It means interpreting not only what is said, but also what is implied: non-verbal cues in tone, body language and things that are held back. Empathy, when applied rigorously, becomes a method in its own right.

Designing the Most Desirable Future

When we combine creativity, insight, and empathy, design research can expand into a prismatic spectrum of alternative futures, one that not only demonstrates what needs to be fixed but also illuminates what is possible.

Take, for example, a well-documented insight from an academic research study, whereby early intervention in women’s depression was proven to be critical. A conventional design response might be to develop a screening tool or a symptom-relief solution. These are undoubtedly valuable. But what if we asked a different set of questions, with a forward-thinking mindset?

How might we create a future that promotes mental well-being for women at every stage of life?

Research shows that ADHD in girls is often underdiagnosed due to ‘atypical’ presentation of symptoms. Left undiagnosed, ADHD often leads to low self-esteem in childhood and serious depression in adulthood. What if we developed smarter identification tools for women at different ages?

From Insight to Action: Design for Change

Design research bridges the gap between understanding and implementation, helping ideas evolve into responsive and relevant solutions precisely and fast.

Beyond its project-specific impact, design research also contributes to academic debates and policy development, as it challenges and disrupts the fundamentals of women’s health. Increasingly, we are seeing researchers ask more critical questions after research projects: What better role can women play in the design process to shape health services for women? To what extent do implicit gender biases affect the quality-of-care women receive? And how might we work with policymakers to drive broader systemic change?

Ultimately, design research is not just about understanding problems. It is also about connecting social, economic, cultural, and environmental dimensions to propose holistic and lasting solutions that create change. In women’s health, that means moving beyond treating physical symptoms to designing systems of care that are empathetic, inclusive, and future-ready.

When guided by empathy and insight, design research becomes a powerful force, not just for fixing what’s broken, but for building the future women deserve.

We help our clients create solutions that empower patients, advance healthcare equity, and unlock new opportunities for innovation. If would you like to learn more, please get in touch.