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Maynooth University, 2025

A Double Diamond

UX Research & Service Design Project

Duration

6 months​

Team

Myself :)

MSc Dissertation (Ongoing)

Barriers to accessing public reproductive healthcare for women living in Ireland

Goal

To investigate barriers that women in Ireland face when trying to access public reproductive healthcare, and to understand how these barriers shape their trust, experience, and engagement with the system.

Overview

This project explores how design can respond to a deeply human challenge: the emotional, cultural, and systemic barriers women face when accessing public reproductive healthcare in Ireland. Through qualitative research, ethnographic interviews, and thematic analysis, I uncovered six core insights that reveal a self-reinforcing cycle of dismissal, silence, and exclusion. Using the Double Diamond process, I reframed the problem not just as a service failure, but a societal one, and designed an early intervention concept aimed at breaking the cycle before it begins. 

Discover

Through a literature review and ethnographic interviews with women across Ireland aged 31–45, I explored the lived experiences of accessing public reproductive healthcare. What emerged were not just personal accounts, but a clear systemic pattern, emotional, cultural, and institutional barriers that compound over time.

I conducted six remote interviews using active listening and trauma-informed practices to ensure participants felt safe sharing sensitive experiences.

 

All research procedures followed ethics board approval from Maynooth University.

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"I think people are given the impression that they are joining a conveyor belt in which you do what you're told and that's it. And that's the only way."

Katie

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"You feel so hopeless. There's been so many times, even in hospital, I just felt so trapped, so, so hopeless, so sad and lonely and just felt like my life was over in ways.
I am someone now that has chronic pain for probably the rest of my life. Luckily, it's manageable right now, but I get flare ups. I get bad episodes.
I feel nearly afraid every day because: Who do I go to? Because nobody cares. They don't care. I'm nearly hoping that things just stay under control because I'm afraid of what do I do next?"

Amy
 

Define

Through iterative coding and thematic analysis, six core insights emerged, ranging from the normalization of pain (“Pain is Womanhood”) to disempowering communication (“Language That Builds Walls”).

 

I feel that a consultant sometimes forget how to talk to ordinary people. They can be talking almost in riddles because they're not translating the medical language into everyday language. And that's difficult and another thing to try and process.

Julia

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These insights revealed not isolated events, but a polycrisis, a self-reinforcing cycle that erodes trust, access, and care for women in Ireland.

A shift in perspective helped: instead of “what happened,” I asked “why does this keep happening?” That question reframed the design challenge as preventative, not just reactive.

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Develop

Using co-creation workshops and “How Might We” prompts, I explored solutions that intervene before trust is broken. The strongest opportunities focused on... This part will be available in publication.

Develop

Concept validation involved feedback sessions with previous interview participants and people not previously connected to the project. The emotional value of the design solution is an opportunity to rebuild generational trust.

Impact

This work seeks to shift cultural narratives by design, moving from silence to voice, from shame to understanding. In doing so, it responds not just to individual needs, but to systemic failures through empathy, education, and design.

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Full publication will be available in 2027

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