Anathema team welcomes Diogo Coutinho, a student from the Masters in Services Engineering and Management at the University of Porto, who will be researching how to design out stigma in the sexual health promotion programme.

Stigma is a key factor in technology acceptance. Ignoring it, makes useful technology left unused and health conditions left uncared for. To tackle this problem designers and design researchers alike need to work directly with the stigmatising topics that affect users, which is difficult, because some existing methodologies are inappropriate and there are scarce guidelines. This project aims to contribute to fill this gap, by giving new strategies to deal with stigma in design research activities.

The research aims to explore ways to tackle stigma in Anathema using design research tools at the intersection with market delivery of the programme. The research will be informed by prior research work in the Design & Emotion field and very focused on experimentation with design research methods, method adaptation and tailoring to target users and communication means (e.g., in person vs remote).

As main outcomes, this MSc research is expected to deliver recommendations for design researchers to address the subject with specific user groups, as well as service blueprints and plans to support Anathema’s market delivery.