I Invented a Smart Tampon Dispenser
Because who wants coin slots, broken knobs, and period shame?
In March 2018, I attended SXSW for a social media client. Wandering the trade show floor, I stopped to watch a ginormous 3D printer dance to hip-hop. I don’t know why 3D printers need to dance, but I got my phone out anyway and started recording along with the masses. A few moments later, I needed to use the restroom, which was just steps away. Entering the women’s room, I couldn’t believe what was in front of me: a broken pad and tampon dispenser adorned with that token of regret women know far too well: “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
It wasn’t unlike any of the other defective machines I had seen before, but its appearance at SXSW revealed a sad, stark truth — that amid the greatest technological advancements across every other industry, women’s basic needs were being left behind.
When I started talking to men about broken tampon machines, most of them didn’t know it was a problem, while women were able to share story after story about the horrors they had experienced.
So why hasn’t anyone modernized the outdated dispensers?
According to research conducted by virtual event solutions company Evia, women make up less than 20% of U.S. tech jobs, which means there aren’t enough women with decision-making power in tech to solve these types of issues. And in an industry largely dominated by men, it’s no surprise that innovation tends to stop at the women’s-room door.
So I decided to do something about it. I got my employer, Huge, to back me with a fellowship and assembled a team of badass colleagues to help me build a better solution. Over the next year, we worked together to create Hooha: a smart tampon dispenser you can text for a free tampon. Fittingly, the machine launched at SXSW last month.
We made the tampons free because toilet paper is free. Believe it or not, a lot of people fight me on this. But in America, we expect certain things out of public restrooms like toilet paper, hand soap, dryers, and even those little toilet seat covers, but not tampons. Why? Is it because we’re just used to the way things are? That’s not good enough. I think tampons should be free in public restrooms.
Traditional pad and tampon dispensers are windowless, metal boxes, so I was hell-bent on adding a window. A window fosters transparency, combats period stigma, and lets users know if the machine is stocked. Not exactly revolutionary, but one of those minute details that I cared about.
When thinking about how we would actually dispense a tampon, we originally considered building an app — but what menstruating person wants to download an app, input their personal information, and hope they don’t bleed through their shorts in the interim? So ultimately we decided that SMS was the lowest barrier to entry. Hooha adheres to GDPR standards, which means we don’t retain any personal information and phone numbers are wiped after 24 hours.
Some of you might be wondering, Why even build a smarter solution when you can just put out a basket of tampons instead? And sure, for the most part, I agree that a basket of tampons sounds like a cheap, cost-effective solution. But the truth is that as a society we’re just not there yet. Why? Because when baskets of tampons are left out in public restrooms, people will usually take more than one. And they go fast — like, really fast, which leaves others resigned to the makeshift toilet-paper pad. Most people don’t steal toilet paper because they know it’s available to them wherever they go. But that’s not the case for tampons — most bathrooms don’t offer tampons, which sucks.
Hooha’s entire goal is to solve the emergency moment when a tampon is needed, so that it buys people time. A user’s phone number essentially becomes their user ID, which helps regulate product flow, so users can’t take more than one tampon at a time. This helps ensure that other people have access to a tampon when they need one.
And to make Hooha even more reliable, we added two sets of sensors. The first set detects when stock levels are low and immediately texts a notification to the facility manager to refill the machine. This was our solve for those abandoned, unstocked tampon machines. The second set of sensors is designed to detect whether a tampon successfully dispensed as a way to prevent the classic “jammed” scenario.
Ultimately, building Hooha taught me two things. First, it turns out, tampon dispensers don’t have to suck. They can be reliable and dispense products in times of need.
And secondly, if you don’t like something — change it. Even if it’s not in your wheelhouse. I work in social media and just last week looked up the difference between “sod” (that’s grass) and “solder” (that’s what you do when you’re fusing things together to create the world’s first smart tampon dispenser).
I know that a smart tampon dispenser isn’t going to fix everything — it’s not going to fix period stigma, and it’s not going to close the gender gap in tech. But if it can at least get people talking and show that innovation has its limits when women are left out of the equation, then I think we might be onto something.
Magenta is a publication of Huge.
