Wingman

Featured Project

Wingman Suggestive Keyboard

We help you talk about the hard stuff.

Where We Started

The truth is, there just aren’t many sexual health programs designed to meet the unique needs of young adult men. We went into this challenge with open minds and allowed the Design Thinking process to truly guide us in learning what young men want when it comes to sex ed, and how we could create a desirable and feasible solution.

As a grantee with funding from Innovation Next, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Population Affairs, Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, we had the freedom to open our minds and explore the possibilities, to focus on a digital solution for how to improve the sexual health of young men.

The Wingman user interface displays auto-complete suggestions based on texting intensity, and offers handy tips on how to bring up important topics, like boundaries, desires and safety.

What It Is

Wingman Suggestive Keyboard is an alternative keyboard for your phone that uses machine learning to help you tackle sexual conversations with ease.

The user sets their texting intensity, and Wingman will suggest words aligned with that intensity. As the system detects that the user is texting about sexual topics, it will deploy tips to help the user learn about sexual health and ask sexual health-related questions to their partner.

With a meter that can visually indicate the sexual intensity of the conversation, Wingman coaches users on when the conversation might be escalating beyond their level of comfort.

Why It Matters

We found that young men are not into reading more sex ed stuff. They know, or feel they know a lot. But talking about it is hard for them. Wingman gives young men micro-learning opportunities, in the form of short tips, when it is relevant and timely for young men.

By learning how to have these hard conversations (and more about ourselves), we can have better connections, better conversations, and yes, better sex.

The micro is what sets Wingman apart. It’s not a textbook or a class. Wingman is just that—a wingman, because we believe that learning how to have these hard conversations and learning more about ourselves, we can have better connections, better conversations, and yes, better sex.

What’s Next

Wingman is coming soon to the App Store!

And we’re just getting started. We look forward to building more features and functions for Wingman. Yes, we know, it’s frustrating that it’s not available for Androids yet, but we hope to get there, too!

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The Innovation Next project was supported by Grant Number TP2AH000023 from the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Population Affairs (OPA). Contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Health and Human Services or the Office of Population Affairs.