What We Took From Metaphors: A Case of Designing For Care After Abortion

This paper explores designing for mental wellbeing within the space of abortion care. We collaborated with abortion care experts, as well as design and HCI researchers, to explore different approaches to this sensitive topic. This collaboration, intertwined with our own sensitivities, and published abortion stories, informed the metaphor-driven design process detailed in this paper. Reflecting on the adoption of metaphors and their deliberate release, we propose a novel and nuanced perspective on metaphors’ role in design. The process facilitated explorations into dimensions of care, poetry, materiality, and language, resulting in the design of a care package to support self-care after abortion. By leveraging the poetic level of these metaphors, we aim to engage people’s experiences through tangible and ephemeral artifacts. Finally, we discuss how this approach aided in addressing the controversial, delicate, and intimate design space of abortion while acknowledging its limitations and proposing potential future applications.