things I studied
RESEARCH
papers
- Working paper · 2026
Who may see my cycle? Consent-first sharing in menstrual and reproductive health tracking: a survey of young adults in Nepal
Background: Menstrual-tracking apps increasingly let users share cycle information with a partner or relative, yet little is known about how young people in South Asia, where menstruation is often restricted at home, regard such sharing. Method: A student team fielded an online, gender-branched questionnaire to young adults in Nepal in April–May 2025 (n = 171; women's branch 106, men's branch 65), recruited through its own networks. I report descriptive statistics, crosstabs with counts and two exploratory tests. Results: Of 105 women who answered, 61.0% tracked with an app, but mostly dates (87.7%) rather than mood (29.2%) or pain (31.1%); 74.5% had been restricted from an activity because of their period. Asked whether a partner or family member could follow their cycle, 49.1% said yes, 32.1% said yes only if they controlled what was seen, and 36.8% also ticked that they preferred to manage it alone. Men rated knowing her symptoms and need for rest highly (86.2% at 4–5 of 5), yet only 10.8% wanted symptom updates, and 52.3% said reminders should depend on her choice. Conclusions: In this convenience sample, sharing was wanted but conditional. The findings support consent-first sharing: off by default, scoped item by item, revocable without notice, and delivering interpretations rather than logs. The sample is young and network-recruited, and the study had no ethics-board review.
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- Design case study · 2026
Count first, compare second: a design case of cash-session reconciliation in point-of-sale software for small businesses in Nepal
Small shops and restaurants in Nepal often cannot say whether the cash in a drawer is right, how much is missing, or why. This design case documents how a point-of-sale product used in Nepal moved from sessions that recorded only a time and a person to an accountable cash drawer. The author, the product's sole designer and its web frontend engineer, describes the decisions and their rationale: modelling the drawer as a ledger whose expected amount can be re-added by eye; a blind, two-phase close in which the cashier counts before the expected amount is shown, to reduce anchoring toward it; treating a blank count as unknown and zero as a known empty drawer; requiring a note only when the drawer is not balanced; a per-location choice between strict and easy modes; a single gate at the payment page; and a per-entry history of corrections. The paper traces iterations, most of which removed something, and derives five transferable principles. It compares the design with patterns documented by other POS products in a 2026 documentation scan. It is not an evaluation: there was no field study and no outcome has been measured. The paper closes with a proposed study combining shift-change observation, discrepancy logging with explicit denominators, and a controlled test of the blind count.
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Designing for disclosure and for daily operations
Research statement
I am a UI/UX designer and frontend engineer in Kathmandu. I work on Tigg, an accounting and point-of-sale product built by BIC Technology for businesses in Nepal, and before that I led Myra, a student women's-health venture. Two questions keep coming back in that work, and they are what I want to study.
1. HCI for health, privacy and consent
When a health app lets someone share, the share button is a consent system. Who can see what, for how long, and what does the other person learn when access is taken away? In Myra, a two-sided survey of 171 people showed that young women in Nepal would accept support from a partner or family member, but mostly on the condition of control, and that the men who would receive that information wanted interpretations rather than raw data. I want to study how people understand and negotiate visibility of sensitive data in households and relationships, especially where stigma (such as menstrual restriction) means the phone itself is shared space.
2. Operational software in low-resource and emerging-market contexts
Most of my professional work is operational software: cash drawers, stock with batches and serial numbers, spreadsheet imports, backups, multi-currency accounting. In Nepal these tools meet Nepali dates, VAT rules, low-end devices and shop routines that global products don't design for. The recurring pattern I see is that the interface is only half the task. The other half happens on paper, in a drawer, at a printer or in someone's memory, and the software has to be designed around that. I am interested in methods for studying and designing these hand-offs between screen and world, with limited budgets and without formal user research infrastructure.
How I work, and its limits
I design and build, so my evidence usually comes from what shipped, from teammates and from first-party feedback, not from controlled studies. The Myra survey below is my only primary dataset. I present it as a compact study, with its limits stated, because I would rather show a small study honestly than a large claim.
Study: Cycle tracking, stigma and consent-first sharing (Myra survey, 2025)
Research question
Would young women in Nepal let a partner or family member follow their menstrual cycle through an app, and if so, on what terms? And what would the people receiving that information want from it?
Two sub-questions supported the design: how do women currently track, and what do they experience that tracking misses?
Method
| Instrument | An online questionnaire written by the Myra team, on a Tally form. Sections on tracking habits, symptom frequency (0–5), emotion and restriction, Companion Mode, help channels, a full ranking of five features, and price |
| Branches | Gender-branched. Women answered about tracking and sharing; men answered about following and what they would want to receive |
| Recruitment | The team's networks: friends and colleagues, email, Instagram, LinkedIn and student organisations |
| Fielding window | April–May 2025 |
| Responses | n = 171: women's branch 106 (105 women, 1 non-binary respondent), men's branch 65 |
| Analysis | Descriptive counts and shares; one crosstab (sharing comfort × "prefer to manage it alone"); free-text answers grouped into themes afterwards, for this write-up (one reader, no second rater) |
| Interviews | Alongside the survey we held informal interviews and conversations; I didn't keep notes, so findings here come from the survey |
Sample and limits
This is a convenience sample, recruited through our own networks and heavy with students. 87% were aged 18–24 and no one was over 34. Only 3.5% preferred Nepali alone. Half of those who said how they found the survey came through a friend, colleague or team member. It is not representative of women in Nepal, and every number below describes this sample only.
Data cleaning: one row shifted by a column was realigned; one exact duplicate pair is retained and noted. Only aggregates are published; no individual answers are shown.
Findings
F1. Women track the date, not the experience
61% of women track with an app (more than half of them with Flo), and 88% track the date. But under a third track mood (29%) or pain (31%), although 65% report mood swings 4–5 on a 0–5 frequency scale and 70% rate their interest in mood tracking at 4–5.
F2. Stigma is part of the context
75% of women had been restricted from doing something because of their period. 74% associate irritation with their cycle and 45% sadness; 3% chose empowerment. Restricted respondents rated the openness of discussion at home lower (mean 3.30 vs 4.13; scale direction inferred, see threats to validity).
F3. Sharing is conditional, and control is the swing vote
| Women: comfortable if a partner or family member could follow your cycle? | n | % |
|---|---|---|
| Yes, definitely | 52 | 49.1 |
| Maybe, if I could control what they see | 34 | 32.1 |
| No, not comfortable | 11 | 10.4 |
| Not sure | 9 | 8.5 |
37% of women also ticked "I prefer to manage it alone", including 10 of the 52 who said "yes, definitely". Wanting support and wanting privacy were not opposites for these respondents.
F4. Receivers want interpretation, not a feed
86% of men rated knowing her physical symptoms, and knowing when she needs rest, at 4–5 in importance. Only 11% wanted "symptom updates"; 63% wanted a daily summary and 51% emotional-support tips. 52% said reminders to be emotionally available should come only if she chooses to share.
F5. Companions are family, not only partners
Men would use the feature for a mother (58%) or sister (54%) almost as often as for a girlfriend (66%).
F6. Priorities and price
Nutrition and fitness ranked first of five features; community support last. Pregnancy tracking was polarised (26 first, 28 last). 58% wanted to talk to a doctor in the app, but only 27% would pay for telehealth, and 52% chose only "a completely free app". Among the 70 who named a positive monthly amount in free text, the median was NPR 225.
What changed in the design
The findings turned a broad product pitch into one consent model, which I designed as a concept:
| Finding | Design change |
|---|---|
| F3: sharing is conditional on control | Every grant starts off and is chosen item by item; she can stop at any time and the other person is not told why |
| F4: receivers want interpretation | The companion sees a derived signal ("she may need more rest this week") and one suggested action, never her logs |
| F5: companions are family too | Several companions, each with separate grants, chosen by relationship |
| F1: mood is experienced but not tracked | Mood is logged beside flow and pain in the same quick log |
| F2: restriction happens at home | Discreet notification copy by default; anonymous mode blocks sharing |
| F6: doctor access wanted, but few would pay | Clinician access framed as an explicit service around a free core |
Two things the data did not support also changed the plan: a Nepali-by-default interface (language is now the first choice at onboarding instead), and a later pregnancy-first direction, which this sample cannot speak to. The full design reasoning, including the states of a companion link, is in the Myra case study. None of it was built or tested with users.
Reflection and threats to validity
- Sampling. A convenience sample from our own networks, young and English-comfortable. The results describe people like the team's contacts. Selection bias probably favours people who are open to talking about periods and to new apps.
- Stated vs actual behaviour. A survey measures what people say they would do. Saying "maybe, if I control it" is not the same as linking a sister's phone.
- Instrument. The team wrote the questionnaire, and I have no record of a pilot. Two men's-branch fields were untitled on the form, so I report those options as published and don't interpret the scale. A device question was added late (21 answers) and I don't use it. The openness scale had no exported labels, so its direction is inferred from the data.
- Framing. The questions introduced Companion Mode by name and described it as respectful, which may have raised acceptance.
- Coding. Free text (price, "what's missing") was grouped into themes after the study, for this write-up, by one reader with no second rater, so those numbers are soft.
- Interviews. Held informally and not documented, so they cannot be used as evidence here.
- My position. I was the founder analysing demand for my own product. I tried to counter that by publishing the counts that cut against us (37% would rather manage alone; pregnancy tracking ranked last by 28 women) alongside the ones that helped.
What I would do next
- A proper interview study. Semi-structured interviews with women across age, language and household type, including Nepali-only speakers and women outside Kathmandu, with consent, recorded notes and a documented coding process. The goal: how sharing is negotiated in real households, not only whether it is wanted.
- A consent-flow usability test. 5–8 moderated sessions on a clickable permissions prototype. The main measure is whether a participant can correctly explain what a companion will see after setup, and whether they can stop sharing without help.
- Paired observation, later. Only if the first two go well: a short diary study with linked pairs, measuring what support actually happens and whether anyone reports harm.
Other inquiry
Smaller design questions from my other work, each written up as a case:
- Designing for physical counting: a cash-drawer flow in which the cashier counts before seeing the expected amount, so the count can't drift toward the target.
- Learning modes: one question bank with three levels of help (Learn, Practice, Review) in an exam-prep app I built for myself and my friends.
- Privacy display modes: hiding amounts in a personal finance visualiser, and finding the places where they still leaked through.
Cite this
Saakha, B. (2026). Cycle tracking, stigma and consent-first sharing: a survey study for the Myra concept (n = 171), Nepal, 2025. Retrieved from https://bibhushansaakha.com.np/research
Aggregates only. The respondent-level data is not published.