Inaction as a Design Decision: Reflections on Not Designing Self-Tracking Tools for Menopause

This reflective essay documents an attempt to design self-tracking technologies for menopause. This process culminated in the decision to not design. The contribution of this essay is the knowledge produced through reflecting on inaction. From an investigation into current examples, it became clear that applying self-tracking to menopause was fundamentally inappropriate. These technologies were also found to risk resulting in more harm than good; both in essentializing and medicalizing a non-medical process, and in perpetuating notions of the bodily experience of the menopausal transition as a negative experience.