(Re)discovering Sexual Pleasure after Cancer: Understanding the Design Space

Cancer treatments often lead to sexual health challenges that greatly impact cancer survivors’ quality of life. Current interventions primarily address physiological aspects, like medication or vaginal care, overlooking psychological, social, and cultural dimensions. This paper explores how HCI can address this gap by supporting post-cancer sexual health with interventions for survivors and their partners, considering their lived experiences. Through reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with (N=6) medical sexologists, we identified five themes: perceiving the body as a medical object, the hot potato problem in oncology, sociotechnical sexploration, reuniting what treatment has divided, and designing interventions with openness in a highly situated context. These themes highlight cancer survivors’ experiences, the (in)effectiveness of current interventions, and provision of care. This research outlines the design space for post-cancer sexual health by providing specific design directions (“what”) and ways for designing them (“how”), while advancing the broader discourse on intimacy and design within HCI.