International Gender Design Network e.V.

Designing Care Futures: Wie gestalten wir gendersensible Gesundheitsprodukte?

In medicine and digital health, products, services, and information are often designed for supposedly neutral users. But bodies, symptoms, life realities, and data are not neutral.

This workshop combines gender and design with questions of gender-sensitive medicine: How do biases arise in health products? What role do language, interfaces, images, data, and participation play? And what might a development process look like that takes different bodies and experiences into account from the very beginning?

Following a brief introduction, participants will work in small groups to develop future scenarios and initial criteria for gender-sensitive health products. The workshop is aimed at students, designers, researchers, practitioners, and anyone interested in more equitable design in the health sector. No prior medical knowledge is required.


The workshop is part of iGDN Week, held as part of the “Falling in Love with all Genders” exhibition at the Museum of Applied Arts. The workshop will be led by Claudia Herling, Chair of iGDN and research associate for the GenDiMedNet project.

The International Gender Design Network (iGDN) is an international nonprofit organization that brings together designers, researchers, educators, students, and practitioners from the fields of culture and design. The iGDN develops exchange formats, workshops, exhibitions, and the iphiGenia Gender Design Award to embed gender-sensitive approaches in theory, practice, and design education, avoid stereotypes, create visibility, and promote gender-equitable solutions.

GenDiMedNet is a collaborative project involving Bielefeld University, the University of Greifswald, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, and the Bernhard Nocht Institute in Hamburg, funded by the BMFTR, which focuses on gender-sensitive perspectives in digital medicine.