2. Problem Framing
Monogamy is a social construct that is dominant in our society. It provides a set of rules and expectations for
relationships that many societies and culture groups implicitly accept or understand. In contrast, polyamory
or“many loves”, is defined by Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart from Polynexus.com as“The practice, state or
ability of having more than one sexual loving relationship at the same time, with the full knowledge and
consent of all partners involved.”Justin Garcia, a researcher from the Kinsey Institute provided us with a
historical context of polyamory which helped us frame our research. He described that polyamory has been
practiced since the dawn of human civilization and while has been considered in the past few centuries as a
taboo, is a growing phenomena.
Technology is dramatically shaping how we meet, interact, and experience intimacy with one another.
We learned from our interview with Garcia that in 2013, for the first time in history, more people started
relationships by meeting online than in person. Through our research, we learned that the internet has
played an integral role in connecting polyamorous people to others, and fostering online and local
communities. Facebook and other social media platforms enable people to find and connect to like minded
people. Online resources like Polynexus, can provide support to questioning individuals as well as connect
a newly identified poly individual or to a newly relocated poly individual that is looking for a community in
their new city.
While monogamy can be described as an exclusive relationship between two individuals. Polyamory is
not as well defined. There are many terms to describe different aspects of poly relationships but there is a
disagreement over definitions within the community. Based on our primary research with this community,
we have developed the following definitions for Polyamory and terms that the community often use.
Introduction
3. Terms in Polyamory
• Polyamory: “The practice, state or ability of having more than one sexual loving relationship at the same
time, with the full knowledge and consent of all partners involved.”
• Monogamy: An exclusive relationship between two individuals.
• Monoamory: “The practice or condition of having a single sexual partner during a period of time.”
• Primary Partners: Partners that have the highest level of commitment with each other.
• Secondary Partners: Primary partner’s other relationships that may have varying levels of commitment.
• Open Relationship: A label that defines a primary partner’s relationship which allows consent for either
partner to have sexual and intimate relationships with other individuals. Often times, this is interchangeable
with polyamory and is considered socially more acceptable. Our subject J and his girlfriend are in an open
relationship. When she goes out of town, she has partners that she engages in sexually and intimately.
• Metamor: This is a term for “someone your partner is seeing” Our first subject E’s partner’s girlfriend
was E’s metamor.
• PolyTriad: A poly triad can consist of three individuals that share equal intimacy, or a metamor and two
individuals that are primary partners.
• Poly Fidelous:“typically a triad that is exclusive to each other.”For example, our subject M was exclusive
with her two husbands.
Because of the richness, depth, and variety of our primary research, and our subjects, no obvious problem
area was identified at this stage. While conducting analysis of our primary and secondary research, many
themes emerged such as communication, privacy within open relationships, negotiations within the
relationships, time management, and jealousy. Because of these complex yet interesting results from our
data, we would like to further explore the complexities before jumping to a problem area. At this early phase
of our project, jumping to a problem area could negate or minimize the quality of our research thus far.
4. Because our research topic is intimacy within the poly community in Bloomington, we recruited participants who
are either members or researchers in this community. Due to the sensitive nature of the topic we chose not to use
the real names of our participants or use identifiable information. Below is a description of our participants.
E is a writer. She comes from an intellectual family and has a strong interest in academic writing. She is very open-
minded and is an activist in the Bloomington community.We recruited E because she is a young woman that has
explored polyamory with her partner for a few years. She idealizes polyamory but has had little success in the
community. She is open to polyamory but is not actively seeking out members of the community and claims she
has rather an emotional and idealized view of polyamory. She described the difference between her‘fantasy’of
poly lifestyle and the reality she has experienced in her attempts at polyamorous relationships.
J is a young male graduate student in Indiana University. He has been in a polyamorous relationship for more than
a year. His interest in polyamory began when he witnessed his roommate’s happy and successful polyamorous
relationship.This encouraged him to explore polyamory. Some of his partners didn’t work out long term, but he
has a stable primary relationship with N. He has very open communication with his primary partner and informs
her of his additional partners. He has a very philosophical viewpoint regarding polyamory. He has no connection
with any polyamory communities including the local and online communities, because he doesn’t want to meet
just poly people, rather he’s interested in people that he meets through his regular routines. His non primary
partners can vary from sexual partners to very close emotional friendships.
M is a graduate student at Indiana University. Most of her relationship has been polyamorous since the age of
fourteen. At the age of 18, her boyfriend and her fell in love with a male and became a poly fidelous triad for over
10 years.They share 3 children together and are no longer together as a poly fidelous triadic marriage.Through
their divorce, one of her ex husbands is polyamorous and her other ex husband does not identify with the
polyamorous lifestyle. M is still polyamorous and does not envision every being monogamous.
Justin Garcia is a researcher at the Kinsey Institute. He studies how culture and technology contextualize and
shape our understanding of sex, romance, and intimacy. He has done research on how mobile technology has
changed sexual encounters. He said that“the most consistent feature of human sexuality is the remarkable
diversity which exists among individuals and cultures.”
“E”
“J”
“M”
Justin Garcia
Participant Profiles
5. Clark
Melissa
Jiaqi
Prianka
Before beginning this research project I was unfamiliar with polyamory as a concept. The concept is so
foreign to me that I had difficulty imagining the motivation for people to be in multiple simultaneous
committed romantic relationships. My definition of intimacy is connected directly with concept of
monogamy. Therefore it is difficult to imagine experiencing intimacy with multiple partners simultaneously.
For these reasons I was very interested in doing a research project with this community. It is an opportunity
to better understand an interesting and diverse community.
From a relatively conservative background, I don’t know much about polyamory people. I’m very curious
about this group of people and want to know more about them. I hope through this research I can have
a better understanding of polyamory people’s value, motivation, behavior and difficulty behind their
relationships. This helps me to be more empathetic about this community. I expect that we can design
something to help polyamory people.
I have never heard about polyamorous relationship before doing this project. But once I started trying to
know this community, I tried to think from their perspective. Different from polygamy, polyamory is not
about power and wealth, but about free will and individualism. My thought was stuck between trying to
figure out how polyamorous world will look like (in the future), and knowing how polyamorous community
live in a monogamy-dominated world. This topic raised my new exploration about individual existence. They
definitely have an expectation about polyamorous relationship. I want to do something to bridge the gap
between expectations and reality.
I had a basic understand of the polyamorous relationship or“many loves”. I am very open to people making
their own choices about their relationship or lifestyle preference. Having a few friends that are already
in polyamorous relationships, I had my own personal assumptions based on their experiences and my
subjectivity as their friend. Many of these relationship experiences dealt with jealousy or a one sided interest
in polyamory. Therefore, my personal opinions and biases dealt with polyamory being too complicated or
confusing. Having conducted these interviews, I now understand the motivations of wanting to stay open.
It’s not just about sex with others, but the intimate relationships people have with each other and a sense of
community within those groups.
Designers’ predispositions, standpoints, and
personal beliefs/agenda
6. Objectives and Scope
Through primary and secondary research, we began an analysis through affinity diagram to explore problem
spaces through qualitative data. Several themes began to emerge from our analysis and ranged from privacy
in openness, communication, jealousy, time management, roles & hierarchy, etc. However, definite problem
areas were not so clear due to the complexity of the data. Through more in-depth research, we can find
out specific problems that can be solved through technology and opportunities. We can use technology to
design better tools to help facilitate polyamorous relationships.
We are hoping to answer the following questions through user research:
1. How is privacy managed in an open relationship? For example, what information can be shared between
primary partner’s about their metamors and vice versa. How do they maintain privacy in open relationships
and what level of privacy do they need to keep? How do different roles that people play in one relationship
influence the level of privacy in other relationships?
2. Communication is key in a polyamorous relationship, especially with primary partners. Negotiations and
rules need to be made and followed so as not to cause distress in relationships and keep metamors and
primaries comfortable around each other. How does technology play a role in their communication?
3. One of the themes that emerged in our interviews was many people in polyamorous relationships
struggle with managing time spent with multiple partners. One of our interviewees described that his love
was not limited, but the constraint was his available time. How do people in polyamorous relationships
manage scheduling their time with multiple partners? Do they use technology to assist them with this task?
Is there specific tools that help poly people deal with this issue?
The scope of the user research is confined to the poly community in Bloomington. We have already
conducted primary research by interviewing three different members of the local poly community and
interviewing a researcher at the Kinsey Institute. We recorded the interviews through audio recording and
field notes. Because of the sensitive nature of this topic we did not photograph our subjects. In the future,
we will use non-identifiable photography during our participatory ideation session, to document the
ideation process.
The goals/objectives of the user research
The scope and sources of the user research
7. Fieldsite & Recruitment
Fieldsite
Recruitment Plan
We conducted the primary research in the Informatics Graduate Design Studio, the Kinsey Institute, Prianka’s
home and one participant’s home. Considering the privacy issue, in the future, we will provide several field
sites for participants to choose, which include participant’s home, Informatics Graduate Design Studio and
the SPEA library.
One member of our research team, Prianka, had contacts with members of the local poly community
in Bloomington. To recruit participants we posted a description of the project to Facebook asking for
participation. People replied and we set up interviews with them. Because they knew a member of our team,
it was easy for us to build rapport and make them feel comfortable. They were all interested in the project
and happy to help with our research. Many of our participants also introduced us to additional contacts
within the community and acted as intermediary between us and their contacts. This is how we recruited
many subjects for the next phase of our research project, the participatory ideation session.
Participation in our study is voluntary, therefore we won’t provide financial incentives. Participants want to
be involved because they are interested in our research and they are curious about the result of our research.
If possible, we will provide snacks and drinks in the participatory design session.
8. Data Collection Methods
We will use semi-structured interview, documentary photography*, experience mapping approaches and
observational study to collect data for this research project.
*No faces or discernable features will be visible.
We chose interviews as the first method in order to fact find through personal accounts and narratives from
our subjects and researcher. Listening to personal stories and specific details about people’s experiences
helped us gain a rich understanding of this community. We learned what intimacy means in the modern
age in the context of the poly community in Bloomington. From several interviews, we developed a deep
understanding of the diversity and complexity of this community. We discovered through our research
different attitudes, behaviors, motivations and goals that exist in the Bloomington poly community.
We can use this method for documenting their experience in two stages:
• The overall journey of their personal accounts from being interested in polyamory to transitioning into the
lifestyle and to where they are now in their lifestyle whether polyamorous or otherwise.
• Almost a week’s worth of experience of their life, including the activities and routines in their lives as well as
their range of emotions that they may go through.
By having them documenting their life, we can motivate them to reflect on their lifestyle to generate
problems and opportunities for design. From experience mapping, we can also see the micro aspects of
their life, which may include how they use technology to communicate, negotiate, manage time, etc. This
method will allow us to dig deeper into their lives and explore deeply embedded facts that may help us
frame opportunities or connect problem spaces. Through this self-reflection of their lives, we can also
engage them in co-creation in design.
Experience Mapping
Semi-structured Interviews
9. Participatory Design Facilitation Session
Documentary Photography
Observation
We will conduct a participatory design facilitation session with members of the local poly community during
the ideation phase of the design process. Because of the complexities of the poly community and varying
degrees of lifestyles, by bringing the community together through design, we can resolve the disconnect
of the complexities and focus on the solutions. Careful attention to detail is critical in a participatory design
facilitation session, especially one with privacy concerns. By providing clear instructions and visuals through
our tools, having a clear schedule, staging the room, and by providing uniform materials (pens, markers, glue
scissors, etc.), we will build a comforting environment for our participants in our facilitation. This session will
include a warm up exercise that will have the user doing a mini iteration of problem solving process in order to
prime them to solve the real problem through ideation through prototyping. We are hoping to deploy the new
method in the participatory design facilitation session. Once they have designed a solution, we will have them
evaluate the prototypes and have a follow up discussion about the session and their experiences within it.
We will use the following methods to record data during the session.
We are currently planning a participatory design workshop. After we receive permission from participants,
we will use non-identifiable photography in this session to record the process. Through the use of
photography, we are able to document the PD workshop and the process our participants use to create low
fidelity prototypes. Documentary photography will allow us to go back and see exactly how it was when
they were conducting the field study. The visual samples contain more information about the environment
than simple field notes, which help us understand more about the context. As a result, we can review the
photographs again and again in order to generate new or more useful design insights based on new items
that we see that we may have missed the first time.
During the PD workshop two of the four researchers will observe and document the workshop by taking
detailed field notes. These notes will include important moments, facial expression, body language, and quotes.
10. We need to provide clear instructions about how to create the map. Since this may take some time and happen
over a period of a few days, we need to check in with subject everyday to make sure they understand what
they need to do and can ask us questions at any time. We also need to conduct a brief interview with each
subject after they finish the experience map. During the interview, we will use audio and notes to record their
rationale behind each part of the map the subjects create. We are deploying this activity Thursday, April 18th
and will take about 4-5 days to conduct.
Data Collection Protocol
During interviews, we used an iPhone to record audio of the conversation. Clark was usually responsible for
recording the audio. Clark, Melissa, Jiaqi and Prianka were responsible for taking notes. When someone is
asking questions, the other three would take notes. Notes included both main points, facial expression, body
language, and minor interactions.
Interview sessions lasted between 30 minute to 1 and a half hours. We conducted interviews at places that
were private locations for our subjects. After an introductions, we asked permission to record audio for
research purpose only. We placed the recorder where all researchers and subject’s voices could be clearly
recorded. We gently reminded the subject that they can choose not to answer certain questions if they
don’t want to. Because this topic deals with personal issues that may be sexual in nature, we had to remain
respectful and cautious throughout the interview session. When we asked personal questions we let them
know that it would be an intimate question and that they didn’t have to answer it if they did not want to.
These are the areas we explored in our initial set of interviews.
• Multiple partners
• Role & hierarchy of partners
• Jealousy
• Rules/protocols/negotiations
• Time management
• Lifestyle public of privacy
• Kids
• Parents
• Grandparents
• Workplace
• Aging
• Activities
• Friends
Semi-structured Interviews
Experience Map
• Emotional involvement
• What online resources
• Pros/cons
• Online/physical community
• Intimacy of community
• Open communication and
privacy
• Marriage
• Ownership
• House
• Finances
• Custody
11. Because of the unique aspect of this community and the sensitivity of the subject matter it is important
for our participants to feel comfortable during the session. The participatory design session will last for
1-2 hours. Before the workshop, everyone is asked to fill in a consent form. We will make sure we get the
permission of observing and recording.
During our participatory facilitation, we will conduct a priming method that to“warm-up”our participants
before ideating on a solution, this should take about 20 minutes. This will enable them to go quickly through
a problem solving process without realizing it before the real problem that will be presented. Through
ideation and prototyping a new solution, they will be able to develop a solution based on their experiences
and then they will evaluate others work and combine various aspects of their work to develop a final
solution together. There will be a 20-minute discussion session to reflect on their experiences through the
session. One researcher will lead the session while another will keep time and provide some help in leading
the session. Two of the researchers will document the experience through recording and photography.
Participatory Design Facilitation Session
Observational Study
Evaluation of prototypes & follow up discussion
We will use the same note taking method we learned during the contextual inquiry and ethnographic
research projects. We will adopt a standardized note form so it will be easy for researchers to share
notes with each other. Including how to record time stamps, research comments, and notes about facial
expression and body language.
The subjects will have time to evaluate the prototypes and decide which aspects of the prototypes they
thought worked well and to develop one new prototype together. This will allow them to resolve the
disconnect because of the complexities of polyamorous lifestyle. Through the follow up discussion, we aim
to provide an environment to receive feedback from our session as well as dig deeper into the decision
making that went into each of our subject’s design process in the facilitation session.
