“My Peaceful Vagina Revolution:” A Theory of a Design

Abstract

Online film, game, and book review sites typically feature two types of evaluation: user reviews and professional critic reviews. In this essay, we consider the differences between these two evaluations, that is, considering what user reviews give us that critics do not, and vice-versa. We observe that the same distinction appears to apply to HCI and interaction design, yet as a field we tend to emphasize only one of them: the experiences of relevant users. We propose that HCI and design would benefit from more professional criticism. We outline the purposes and qualities of criticism in the arts and humanities. We argue that as HCI and design emphasizes the ways that design artifacts embody or bear knowledge, it will benefit from a practice of criticism to explicate that knowledge. We develop these ideas through an analysis of a design, the Formoonsa Cup, which is a functional menstrual product and also a form of design activism. We offer a theory of the Formoonsa Cup, which exemplifies a role of theory in the humanities, that is, as a theory of a particular, rather than a more general phenomenon. And we conclude by showing how many theories of works would, over time, benefit HCI’s repertoire.

Therefore turn at least your minds around now;

now they’ll begin to speak, and now we’ll be pressed to answer.

Hymenaeus Hymen, come! O Hymen Hymenaeus!

—Catullus Carmen 62