Opportunity Statement:

How might we create a trauma-informed tool for people across the gender and sexuality spectrum to safely explore individual needs for intimacy, physical touch, and loving relationships?

Client: Papaya Project - Non-Profit

Context:

Papaya Project, a Seattle-based nonprofit dedicated to sexual health education, needed a tool that could:

• Be used in clinical and therapeutic settings with professional sexual health educators

• Support non-facilitated use for individuals, couples, or groups

• Encourage self-reflection, communication, and consent

• Feel inherently trauma-informed, queer-affirming, and inclusive

Use Cases:

• Non-Facilitated Settings

  • Solo reflection and exploration

  • Romantic and/or sexual partners

  • Friend groups, poly-amorous & non-monogamous groups, or mixed-relationship constellations

• Facilitated Settings

  • Papaya Project workshops

  • Queer speed-dating events

  • Sexual health trivia gatherings

  • Guided sessions with sexual health educators and industry professionals

Ideal Outcomes:

The tool should:

• Help people experience sex worth having – sex grounded in desires, boundaries, and agency

• Expand personal definitions of sex and intimacy

• Encourage openness, curiosity, and listening

• Reduce shame around sexuality and intimacy

• Support meaningful connection and collective learning

Timeline: 1 year

Our Design Approach:

1. Expert Interviews

2. Rapid Iterative Prototyping

3. Co-design, group & intercept testing sessions

4. Branding, Visual Identity & Product Design

Population Emphasis:

To ensure broad applicability, we tested with participants who identified as: queer, trans, non-binary, straight, bisexual, non-monogamous, and pansexual. Ages ranged from 23–50+.

Therapists and sexual health educators emphasized the importance of inclusivity, choice, and bodily autonomy.

Discovery Stage

Expert Interviews

We conducted interviews with therapists and sexual health educators who specialize in intimacy, trauma, and queer communities.

We explored questions like:

• When are physical vs. digital tools most useful?

• How do facilitators create emotional safety? How can games replicate that?

• What barriers emerge around shame, regulation, and group dynamics?

Key Takeaways

One of our discovery interviews with therapist Natalie Henry, helped us to shape our understanding of regulation and the benefits of physical objects. Some highlights from that conversation included:

• “Dysregulation can be the baseline for people, and they may not know.” 

• “One half of feeling heard is being listened to, the other is listening.”

• “I would give clients a PDF for them to have, but they would never look at it. But just having [an object] around makes a big difference.

How these learnings informed our decision-making:

1. Ambient discovery

   1. We learned that when tools are physically present in therapeutic spaces, curiosity naturally forms. We referred to this as ambient discovery. This insight led us to design a tactile, physical product.

2. Feeling heard through listening

   1. We needed to consider what mechanics might be needed to support listening, not just sharing.

3. Managing dysregulation

   1. Sex and intimacy can be activating topics – this is especially true for people with histories of trauma. We needed to design intentional pauses, choices, and grounding moments, woven throughout the tool.

Guiding Principles

We grounded the design in SAMHSA’s trauma-informed care principles, framing each as a design lens:

1. Safety

2. Trustworthiness & Transparency

3. Peer Support

4. Collaboration & Mutuality

5. Empowerment, Voice & Choice

6. Cultural, Historical & Gender Responsiveness

These principles became evaluative anchors for the game’s mechanics, content, and facilitation guidance.

Auditing The Current Offerings

We conducted an industry audit of sexual intimacy related product interventions. 

List of existing tools

1. The And Couples Game

2. Healthier Together

3. Hack your nervous system

4. Sex Talk

5. Where Should We Begin?

Most of these tools assume:

1. Heterosexuality

2. Monogamy

3. Cisgender norms

4. Supportive or ‘Healthy’ relationships as a default

Why Is This Harmful?

One user review captured the pain of these assumptions:

“They assume you have a normal, healthy relationship to begin with… I felt my face burning as I read the question aloud. I wished I could disappear.”

This reinforced our commitment to designing mechanisms of safety, dignity, and choice at every step.

Low-Fidelity Design

Alongside Papaya Project founder Naomi Price-Lazarus, we co-designed the early content.

Game Elements

1. Ask / Share Die – determines whether the roller answers the chosen question or invites someone else to answer

2. Category Die – 6 sided die that corresponds with category decks: Relationships, Sex & Kink, Identity, Pleasure, Sexuality, Wild

3. Question Decks – 5 decks of category-specific cards

4. Dig Deeper Cards – invitations for the person answering a question to share more.

Creating Safety Through Game Mechanics

Our primary driver for co-creating consent was within the instructions. We felt this a good place to create a collective understanding of what the game will involve and for individuals to be able to be self-responsive with how vulnerable they were willing to be with the group they were playing with.

1. Read the instructions 

   • Within the instructions we included ‘Pledge to Listen’ – which is an opening intention that allows everyone in the room to co-create consent. Some of the queries from this section include:

     • Do I feel safe to share with the people that are around me?

     • Are there any categories of questions that I am not comfortable with sharing today?

       
       

2. Roll the dice

   • The ‘ask/share’ die determines whether you, or someone else within the group answers the question. 

   • The ‘category’ die determines the category deck you pull from. 

     
     

3. Pick Up A Card 

   • Pull a card, and read aloud. The chosen person will answer the question.

   
   

4. Dig Deeper

   • Other players can use a ‘dig deeper’ card if they would like clarification or more insight from the person answering the question.

     
     

5. Winning the game

   • In a group setting, the first player to win four categories, wins the game.

Research Stage

Low-fidelity testing

Using custom-coded digital dice and a Miro whiteboard, we tested early mechanics remotely—allowing quick iteration prior to physical prototyping.

Virtual Dice Roll

We met with sexual health experts to test the low-fidelity mechanics and content of the game. Some questions we focused on included:

1. Are the mechanisms we are using to create a safer environment for connection clear in both their use and value?

2. Are the questions that we test able to be answered by a diverse population of people? Are they inclusive to experiences outside of the cishet and heterosexual norm?

3. Are the teaching moments in the game clear and useful?

Key Insights:

1. Dig Deeper Cards

   1. These were initially unclear. Particular confusion around where they get placed after being used.

2. Teaching moments 

   1. One of our experts, Kiana, shared how valuable it was to have teaching moments throughout the game and how not assuming that everyone has the same baseline sexual education is an accessible approach

3. Before, During, and aftercare

   1. Our main source of consent and agency was at the beginning of the game. We used the ‘pledge to listen’ in the instructions as a key source of intention setting. We received feedback prompting us to inspect what moments of care might look like before, during, and after the game. 

How we adjusted the game:

1. Glossary

   1. As a way to organize content and lean into moments of education without it being too disruptive to the game, we created a glossary of terms included as a point of reference in the instructions.

2. Personal Gameplay Cards

   1. We added cards that include suggestions for care prior to gameplay, during gameplay, and after gameplay. This decision was to increase the capacity for users to be self-responsive to their needs. 

3. Moments of choice in gameplay

   1. Our experts emphasized the importance of giving players ways to decline a question without losing dignity – especially in group settings, where subtle social pressure can make opting out feel difficult.

   2. To support this, we built a deliberate moment of private choice into the gameplay. When the dice select a player, the card is handed to them to read silently first. They then decide whether they want to answer the prompt before it is shared aloud. This mechanism reinforces agency, reduces shame, and protects personal boundaries while still enabling meaningful connection.

      
      

Group Testing

Group Testing Design

We invited a mixed group of strangers, acquaintances, and sexual health experts and non-experts to test the mid-fidelity experience. These seven participants were asked to run through the gameplay with as little assistance from us as possible. This was to see where they might be getting stuck, and point of unnecessary friction in the game. 

Insights & Decisions From Group Testing

Personal Gameplay Card → Integrated Care in Instructions

1. Insight:

   1. The personal gameplay card, which offered care prompts before, during, and after play, was consistently glossed over once the game began. Participants didn’t return to it, indicating that support cues needed to stay visible throughout the experience.

2. Decision:

   1. We moved these care prompts into the instructions to be read aloud at the start of each session. We added prompts for what acts of care might look like for after the game had been completed.

Moment of Choice → Clearer Instructional Emphasis

1. Insight:

   1. Participants unanimously said the private moment of pause before answering a question was extremely helpful for checking in with their comfort level. Several noted that the mechanic was so valuable it needed a stronger callout.

2. Decision:

   1. We highlighted the moment of choice more explicitly in the instructions, clarifying how it works and why it matters for emotional safety.

Audience Fit → Validated for Therapeutic & Community Use

1. Insight:

   1. Participants envisioned using the game in therapy sessions, client work, group therapy settings, and queer friend groups—affirming broad applicability across facilitated and non-facilitated contexts.

2. Decision:

   1. We refined the instructions and content with these audiences in mind, ensuring inclusive language and trauma-informed grounding suitable for both professional and casual environments.

Dig Deeper Cards → Come Again?! + Come Together Tokens

1. Insight:

   1. The “Dig Deeper” cards felt too scarce (each player only had three), making them feel precious and limiting. Participants also wanted a way to open certain questions to the group when collective curiosity was sparked.

2. Decision:

   1. We replaced the cards with a double-sided token:

   2.  “Come Again?” — invites deeper individual sharing

   3. “Come Together” — opens the question to group reflection
      This made the mechanic more flexible, responsive, and aligned with group dynamics.

Accessibility Issues → Improved Contrast in High-Fidelity Design

1. Insight:

   1. Low color contrast on the dice made it hard to distinguish categories and select the correct card deck.

2. Decision:

   1. In the high-fidelity version, we adjusted color contrast across dice and card decks to maximize readability and accessibility.

Intercept Interviews

Prior to moving onto final print-ready designs, we adapted these changes and ran some intercept interviews in Seattle’s cal-anderson park

• Video of intercept interviews

High Fidelity Design

• Images and videos of high fidelity design

• Event Photos 

• Playthrough Videos

Impact

Today, Come Again?! is played across Seattle at Papaya Project workshops and has found a home in therapeutic spaces around the country, where sexual health educators use it to support deeper reflection and connection. Our first print run sold out—mostly to buyers in the U.S., with a few early adopters from abroad joining in as well.

Testimonies:

• "This will allow people to have those BIG conversations around sex, relationships, and pleasure, in a fun and curious environment. Reducing the anxiety of vulnerability for many.” - Ariadna Rodriguez Barclay (she/they), CHSE, Sex Educator and Artist

• "Come Again is a fun, sex positive game that encourages you to learn more about your own relationship to sex and sexuality, and to get comfortable exploring these topics in intimate or group settings. If you're looking for a playful and destigmatizing way to dig deeper with partners, friends, students or clients, look no further! Come Again will have you laughing, learning, reflecting, and wanting to go another round!" - Shani Redlich (she/her), Sex Educator