A Conversation with Fran Wang & Rachel Hobart of Yona
On Wednesday evening, February 24th, we kicked off the first event of our new Conversation Series. We had the honor of hosting Fran Wang and Rachel Hobart, two kickass women from frog, a global design consultancy, and founders of Yona—Health for People with Vaginas. About four years in the making, Yona is a passion-driven project brought on by the desire for change and improving the pelvic exam experience for all with a vagina. Read along as we share deep insights about our presentation with Fran & Rachel, from research & development to addressing inclusivity and much more. We cannot help but grin, thinking about how bright their future is.
“Vaginas are amazing. Taking care of them should be too. Yona is an experience design concept that reimagines the pelvic exam from a patient-centered perspective, beginning with the redesign of the speculum. Founded in 2017, Yona is the brainchild of Rachel Hobart, Sahana Kumar, Hailey Stewart, and Fran Wang, designers and engineers at frog design. Yona is a work in progress—today a concept and conversation starter, tomorrow something much more.”
“Yona is a project that we started of our own will, something we prompted out of our own experiences. We do it out of our passion and our own dedication.”
Image courtesy of Fran & Rachel’s WIID Yona Presentation on February 24th, 2021. Their branding features Jamie, an intentionally androgynous brand character created in hopes “to be relatable to real people.”
Thank you to everyone who spent their evening with us; we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
With nearly 200 participants in attendance, this was our biggest event to date, and we could not be more grateful. It’s beautiful how Fran and Rachel have taken one of the most intimate and uncomfortable moments and turned it into a patient-centered healthcare experience. It’s something safe, comfortable, and anxiety-free. It was a conversation not just of design but of humanity and inclusivity—an emotional take on radical empathy. With an insightful perspective into the struggles the LGBTQ+ community continues to face, they spoke with clarity in addressing anxieties in the exam room.
With a walk through their breadth of work, broken down into four phases, we were able to see the Yona journey through their lens. From patient-provider research to concept, visual brand identity, LGBTQ+ research, article release, and speculum design execution. These stages are imperative to the process, though we are reminded that the process is not always linear: it rarely is.
The following statement from our open conversation says it all as they kindly echoed their hope for the future of vaginal health. “We see this as it’s not the end-all-be-all speculum. It’s just the next speculum. Hopefully, there’ll be an evolution even on top of this as we continue to improve for both patient and provider comfort.”
Watch our conversation with Fran + Rachel here or read our full recap below.
Their mindset, support from frog, and preventative health care.
Chalkboard sketch by our Moderator and WIID Board Member, Miranda Degg.
“We initially set out to start this conversation to destigmatize vaginal health based on what we learned in our research. The exam itself is so anxiety-inducing people don’t get their exam; this became the provocation. Our driving force was that the exam shouldn’t be so horrible that people avoid it. Whether that be from discrimination, anxieties about the tools of the procedure, past traumas, we wanted to change this to empower people to take care of their health.”
Fran and Rachel’s underlying motivation to continue this work stems from their passion for its importance, ethos, and pathos. Pelvic exams are a critical part of preventive health care. They were reminding us that it’s the quickest way for providers to screen for cancers [Cervical & Ovarian] + disorders. With their digital platforms unveiling, they began to stimulate these issues openly, allowing a beautiful dialogue to arise. Referring to it, as Rachel describes where the bulk for the Yona work took place, “we took the learnings from our phase one research and applied [that] to our concepts.” People were listening, reaching out, and sharing their stories.
Photo courtesy of Fran & Rachel’s WIID Yona Presentation on February 24th, 2021. The kickass women behind Yona, from left to right: Rachel Hobart (Visual Designer), Sahana Kumar (Interaction Designer + Yona Alumnus), Hailey Stewart (Industrial Designer & Design Researcher + Yona Alumnus) & Fran Wang (Mechanical Engineer)
Blatant and to the point, the speculum has not changed much in 200 years; the original is exceptionally misogynistic and racist. Fran recalls, “We found that it wasn’t just us who were learning and pushing for improving this process. At the time, there was a zeitgeist of interest in reclaiming this space, addressing these taboos, bringing this type of care out from this shame that often surrounds it and hides it, and talking about it more openly.” She also says, “a speculum, is a tire jack for the vagina.”
It’s important to note that at frog, they’re supported and encouraged to pursue ‘bench projects.’ Rachel divulges, “why we’ve been able to do this for so long is our personal dedication and passion. Fran and I do this in the mornings, on the weekends, around our work hours; this is something that we’re motivated about because we know that it’s so needed. It’s our dedication.” Fran accredited, “I think we’re very fortunate in the type of workplace that we’re in, we’re surrounded by other people who are also driven just by personal passion and interest in whatever it might be, and for us, it happens to be Yona.”
How it started & what they learned through The Yona Research Phases; Dissecting methods of radical empathy.
At great lengths, we heard about radical empathy and their choice to use it as a methodology early on throughout the research phases. Radical empathy is simply an act of understanding other people’s feelings and experiences. It began with Haley Stewart and Sahana Kumar, now recognized as Yona ‘alumnae’ and part of the original four had their pelvic exams in the same week, and the idea grew from there.
“If I bring it up in conversation at dinner or whatever, people who’ve had the exam will be like ‘Oh my god, I know that scooch moment’ or ‘Yes, that clicking is awful.’”
A pelvic exam is private, and as Fran phrases it, “if you’re in the secret, you know.” As designers, we have this eye to look at things differently through a more critical lens; using this skillset, Haley and Shahana asked, “Why does this have to be this way?” Using radical empathy helped them communicate to those without a vagina or who have yet to have a pelvic exam to understand better what this experience is like.
The perfect scenario to use in the R&D phase, as Fran continues to say, “If I bring it up in conversation at dinner or whatever, people who’ve had the exam will be like ‘Oh my god, I know that scooch moment’ or ‘Yes, that clicking is awful.’ People get it, but if you haven’t been in that exam room before, none of this makes sense; this was a way for people who have not had that exam to get a sense of how terrible it is. In a way, that’s not just me telling you because that’s not very impactful. Radical empathy formed this great way to bridge this huge informational and emotional gap.” Using this technique to have stories read back to them and to their studio peers, the Yona team was about to capture these missing pieces and unknowns.
Looking at the reflections of solely cis-gendered individuals wasn’t enough. Seeking out stories of LQBTQ+ patients flipped perspectives entirely. To visualize personal anecdotes shared by LGBTQ+ patients on top of their own conveys “a duality of ‘Oh we helped somebody else understand our part, but we also need help understanding their part.’ Keeping in mind that you don’t know everything even though you might know a lot, there’s more to be heard.” See this video for how they combined their look into radical empathy, produced by FreeThink.
Image courtesy of Fran & Rachel’s WIID Yona Presentation on February 24th, 2021
“The modern-day pelvic exam should be designed for modern-day people,” inclusivity for all with a vagina.
“We’ll often hear languages like women’s health or the woman’s exam. Still, this exam doesn’t just apply to people who identify as women; some people are transgender, asexual, or intersex, who might need this exam as well. Early on, we decided to redesign something that you know hasn’t been redesigned in nearly 200 years. We were going to do it with consideration of everyone who has a vagina. We know that not everyone with a vagina identifies as female, so being inclusionary of all folks with a vagina was a decision we made early on. We have decided to stick to that throughout.” Together, they strongly felt, “this wasn’t the women’s exam anymore. It’s vaginal care.”
“Together, they strongly felt, ‘this wasn’t the women’s exam anymore. It’s vaginal care.’”
Removing any gender-specific identifiers and pronouns to be as inclusive as possible began solidifying their allyship goal, a meaningful step forward. They aimed to be an ally and raise voices for marginalized groups within health care. This mindset helped steer phase II + III of their research by having these conversations with LGBTQ+, learning about their experiences, their stories. Advocacy is imperative and very much a struggle, too, not just for marginalized people but also for cis-gender individuals.
The pandemic provided Fran and Rachel with an opportunity to break out of the San Francisco bubble to gather a more diverse and extensive participant pool through phone calls across the country, something they recognized that they were greatly lacking. As an attribution of their findings in Phase III, they took a step further and created something special; Fran and Rachel composed a Medium article From ‘Her’ to ‘Their’ —Including LGBTQ+ Experiences in Pelvic Health. Throughout the article, they touched on many things, “everything deserved an article with so many nuances.” Fundamentally voicing their findings, bringing attention to the unheard voices.
How form and CMF [Color Material Finish] details dictate the patient & Provider exam experience + other hopes.
Their investigation into form and CMF was something they tackled both over time and pretty quickly through research, consultations with their advisors, and many conversations with their manufacturer. Early on, they saw no need for the speculum to be as big and bulky as it was on top of its scary appearance. First and foremost, they wanted to rid the speculum of these attributes. Discovering how a small detail in the device’s ergonomics, an angle, can thwart one of the many exam anxieties, known as the “last scooch.” Or how the bladder’s anatomy inspired the two leaves’ design to decrease pain and discomfort, hoping to put an end to yet another disquiet.
As described by Fran, “We knew we wanted ours to become something that’s more approachable and less intimidating. We also knew we needed this to be something that a provider would want to use. Unifying the form, with both the design and the function. We wanted these pieces to each tell a story about how they’re used; to be unified into one language and make it one articulate piece.”
The cold and undesirable temperature of the speculum raised concern about the materials, giving them a direct responsibility to make an immediate change. Fran knew the device needed to be stainless steel, have an autoclavable silicone on the exterior, + be cleanable. In designing Yona, they settled upon reds and blues for branding, took it a step further, and applied it to the device. There is this fine line in having it look like a toy or something scary. Visual identity is of utmost importance, distinctly when providing comfort for something as intimate and vulnerable as a pelvic exam. As Rachel put it, “We did a lot of CMF explorations into what the colorways could be, what you see around the colors, with a device like this one color is absolutely paramount to making it work. Needed to strike that balance right.”
Adoption has been one of their key tenants throughout the journey. How Yona is used and accepted is imperative. When they set off to design the speculum, they knew it needed to be just familiar enough. If you create something far enough out of reach, you cannot drive it; there is a mental disconnect. Suppose a professional can neither associate nor accept a design rendered too abstract from the previous. It would be tough to get such a device to market, let alone incorporating it into the medical curriculum. To help avoid these abstractions throughout the development process, they designed with both the patient and provider in mind, consulting their prototypes with one of their clinician advisors over at Planned Parenthood.
“Inclusive design is good business, it’s where the world is going”
What’s next for Fran & Rachel is simple; they would like to get the Yona speculum to market and need help.
“We get this question a lot which is what’s next? For us, it’s very simple; we want to get a speculum to the market. The most efficient and effective way to do this is to partner with an existing organization who has the resources and the expertise we need.”
Many things can benefit from the Yona touch, but today Fran and Rachel focus on bringing the speculum to the point of viability. They are looking for a strategic partner with experience and resources in bringing medical devices to market. The number of hoops to jump through to get a medical device to market is difficult, but hearing Fran and Rachel’s goal to rid the world of the speculum designed by J. Marion Sims in the 1840s makes us all the more excited. Out with the archaic and in with the new. The future for the Yona experience is full of endless possibilities, one step at a time. “We want to branch out what Yona could be entirely, looking to what are other elements of the experience we could change.”
Echoing this, a reminder from WIID: these exams are critical for preventative health care, so if you haven’t already, please get checked out. We’re looking forward to following these kickass women as they continue and grow through their Yona journey. “You know, with medical devices and innovation, there’s not much. It’s just been this history of a slow nod to innovation. We’re hopeful that just even us existing has made waves, and hopefully, we can see some impact in the medical device space.” -Rachel Hobart.
FRAN WANG, Co-Founder of YONA & Mechanical Engineer at Frog.
Fran is the Mechanical Engineer and de facto Industrial Designer for Yona, creating meaningful and memorable physical products and experiences. In a progressively digital world, she believes that designing for the physical world is imperative but that the greatest value comes from transgressing the boundaries between disciplines.
Fran believes that impact happens at an organizational and systemic level but can start at an individual level through design and engineering. She is a graduate of the Dartmouth Thayer School of Engineering, with a B. Engineering ’13 and B. Arts ’12 in Mechanical Engineering and Biology.
“The pelvic exam, it’s an uncomfortable topic because it’s something that people suffer through in private. We need to be able to design for things that aren’t just a part of our life.” *Fran, during the Freethink & Instagram Design videos.
Rachel Hobart, Co-Founder of YONA & Visual Designer at Frog.
As Brand Manager and Visual Designer for Yona, Rachel dives into every project aiming to design something that is as functional as it is beautiful. She is collaborative by nature and delivers best when working closely with clients and teammates to bring ideas from concept to reality. The combination of Rachel’s craft in visual communications and passions in culture push her to make meaningful work. Through design, she hopes to create positive and impactful change in the world. Rachel is a 2014 graduate with a Bachelor of Design, B.Des., from the University of Washington School of Art + Art History + Design’s Visual Communication Design program.
“As different as everyone’s exams are, there’s a lot of the same pain points that happen that everyone experiences. You have to wear a grown. You have to get on a table. You have to put your legs up, and there’s the scooch. So, it’s very uncomfortable and very exposing. The combination of all these things make it a really tough exam for a lot of people, to the point where people just don’t get their exam.” *Rachel, during the Freethink & Instagram Design videos.
Thank you to Fran and Rachel for sharing their story with us! learn more at yonacare.com
Image courtesy of Fran & Rachel’s WIID Yona Presentation on February 24th, 2021 {Final Slide}