Developing his master’s thesis – AnathemaService – at Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, Diogo Coutinho is exploring design research methods to deal with taboo topics such as sexuality. In this sense, and in order to prepare the market entry of the Anathema app, three workshops were organized with 11 participants. These sessions aim to help understand what people value in a product, becoming a valuable tool in defining the customer journey. In each session, participants (volunteers from the COLABORAR network) were asked to perform various tasks, allowing to understand the most valued services and features.
“To tackle the problem of stigma, designers need to work directly with the stigmatizing topics that affect users, which is difficult as some of the methodologies used are inappropriate. AnathemaService aims to contribute to fill this gap by giving new strategies to deal with stigma in design research activities”, explains Diogo Coutinho.