Winning the YTH Live Global Innovation Challenge

and our journey thereon

Hello from India! Arushi and I were the Winners for the YTH Innovation challenge 2021. For the YTH Innovation challenge 2021, we conceptualised a digital sexuality education application called I Tried Sex and I am Not So Sure!

I works as a human centered designer on health programs including issues of sexual health and rights for vulnerable populations while Arushi works as a UX designer designing digital user experiences using new media.

Through my work designing sexual health programs , I had seen patterns of fear driving young women’s sexual experiences. To design a digital platform that addresses these fears, we mapped them across the timeline of young women’s sexual experience.

We realised that sexuality education is usually targeted at adolescents in schools. In a country like India, adolescents engaging in sexual experiences is a taboo. Therefore, CSE may easily become a hushed and rushed formality where both adolescents and educators skip through any actionable at the moment.

This made us wonder, what if we added a component of CSE closer to the sexual experience- when young people are actually curious or fearful?

When we examined fears of young people closer to the experience, we saw patterns of insecurity, guilt, fear, confusion and loneliness straight after a negative sexual experience, especially for young women. What we didn’t see were innovations addressing these post sex fears. This led us to our idea — I tried sex and I’m not so sure — a platform that addresses young women’s fears and apprehensions post sex.

Ever since winning the challenge last year, we have conducted a human centered research on post-sex fears of young women in India. The YTH team was also kind to connect us with experts on sexuality education, adolescent psychology and nonprofit innovation who guided us before we began developing the intervention. We received mentorship from our respective organisations — TinkerLabs and NID. Moreover, HCDExchange encouraged and supported me to take up the research as part of her individual project.

Through our dedicated research, we identified a list of unmet needs that kickoff straight after an initial sexual experience. Some of these include:

1. Fear of disappoiting partner when refusing sex
2. Fear of disappointing family
3. Shame of difficulty or failure of penetration
4. Guilt of ‘losing virginity’
5. Fear of my sexual activity being traced to me
6. Fear of unintended pregnancy
7. Fear of reproductive health issues

This research helped us gain a second round of funding through the RiseUp program. As we work with our friend, Ajwad to code the platform, we have initiated a movement around normalising these unspoken post-sex fears. We will be sharing more about this through our Digital Poster presentation at YTH Live 2022 where we invite you to join this global movement and spark conversations on these unspoken yet emotional aspects of sexual experiences.

So if your team is applying for the innovation challenge this year, we have only one tip for you, that helped us get through:

Start from needs, not opportunities.

Although the challenge asks for a digital CSE platform, start with understanding and articulating the sexuality related needs of a target audience you understand well. Once you have some problems that are rooted in user needs, map which ones can be solved through a digital CSE platform.

Besides giving us a project that we have been pursuing ever since, the YTH Live also gave us global exposure that has guided us in our journey in this project. We ensured we attended panels and networking events, especially anything related to sexuality education and the emotional outcomes of sexual experiences. We made connections that we pursued later, some friends we made there actually voted for our idea as well :)

2021 witnessed the first YTH Live and it was a beautiful digital experience as one could hop around rooms and explore different formats of learning and networking. We also made sure to visit all digital posters, one of which inspired us to apply for a digital poster this year!

Overall, we are looking forward to YTH Live 2022 and have already registered as Early Birds. We are grateful to ETR and especially the YTH team for getting us on our journey. We strongly believe tools from human centered design can help young people design impactful innovations, and are happy to help the YTH team and applicants this year use these tools.

Watch our pitch for last year’s Innovation Challenge here and view our insights on the topic here.