Sports and Menstrual Data for the Health and Performance of Rowers: A research-through-design approach

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant increase in the number of professional female athletes. One thing that both professional and amateur athletes can experience is the effects of their hormonal cycles. These hormonal cycles can affect their performance, and in return, their performance can affect their hormonal cycle. However, the underrepresentation of female athletes in sports research has resulted in most sports guidelines not reflecting this possible connection between the menstrual cycle and performance, causing female athletes to be unaware of it. Athletes should be aware of the connection between their menstrual cycle and performance. Female rowers, in particular, experience a rapid increase in training load and they may be hesitant to discuss menstrual problems with their coach due to their relative newness to the sport, which could cause them to perform less optimally or even unhealthily. This project aims to find an alternative approach to support female rowers to build their knowledge using their sports and menstrual data so that they can perform optimally and healthily. This project followed a research-through-design approach. This meant that knowledge was generated through design activities (Stappers & Giaccardi, 2014). The design activities were performed in three cycles to iteratively increase knowledge and improve a design that supported rowers in understanding the connection between their performance and the menstrual cycle. Each cycle began with a theoretical investigation of current design practices. These practices were then applied during a practical phase. The primary objective of each practical phase was to deploy and evaluate a design prototype with rowers. The first cycle of research investigated how sports and menstrual data could be implemented in designs for female rowers. During the practical phase, a digital prototype was used with rowers and the evaluations indicated that the design shoul
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