Rianna Raymond-Williams discusses ‘Unboxing’, her unique methodology that takes sexual and reproductive health research to Black Caribbean women.
Rianna refers to her research participants as contributors to reflect their active role in co-constructing the research journey. Although she did not facilitate a participatory action research study, she recognises the importance of honouring their agency, perspectives, and knowledge, central to shaping the study’s outcomes. Rianna also uses the term narratives, in comparison to data, within her work to emphasise the lived experiences, voices and meaning-making of contributors, rather than reducing their stories to abstract findings or statistics.
Hard to reach or easy to ignore?
The term hard to reach is often projected onto communities whose voices are consistently absent from research data, most often those already marginalised and thus harder for health services to engage, despite their goal of providing equitable care for all (Flanagan & Hancock 2010). But this term is significantly loaded, as it fails to acknowledge the inherent power dynamics within research that shape whose voices are centred, whose voices remain excluded, and how historical legacies of exploitation in research continue to shape the conditions we see today (Washington 2008, Braizer 2008). Rather than asking why specific communities are ‘hard to reach’, perhaps the real question is – have they simply been easier to ignore?
This article profiles the development and application of ‘Unboxing’, a creative elicitation tool for qualitative research, utilised to explore the experiences of Black Caribbean women accessing, providing and navigating sexual and reproductive healthcare in the UK as service users, service providers and policy influencers. This method advocates for the principles of cultural sensitivity and trauma-informed care to be factored into research design to engage with communities who experience multiple layers of harm and oppression (Collins & Bilge 2016).
Motivations for methodology
During a conversation with Dr Karla Perez Portilla, one of my supervisors, about creative ways to engage participants, she described an experience using props she discovered while working as a Mental Health Foundation researcher evaluating See Me’s social movement, a movement to end mental health stigma and discrimination across Scotland. The props included a heart (to represent sharing something emotive), a key (to represent something important), and a foot (to represent the next steps a participant planned to take after the session). Together, these props acted as conversational pacemakers, tools designed to spark discussion, support reflection, and co-produce knowledge during feedback and evaluation. As the props were soft, they could also be thrown around during in-person sessions as a fun way to spark engagement.
The simplicity and creativity of that idea struck me. Typically, feedback on workshops can feel stale, repetitive, and uninspiring, as people often feel tired by the end of a session. This can mean they are less likely to engage, resulting in evaluation forms becoming a rushed afterthought. However, using pictures and props introduces a different dimension. Imagination and creativity help people share thoughts and emotions that are hard to understand. Using real objects also brings play and sensory exploration, enabling people to ‘feel their way’ to expression through touch and representation.
In addition to this conversation with my supervisor, I was influenced by the experience of coming across ‘unboxing’ videos during lockdown – an infamous trend of pandemic life that continues today – whereby influencers would receive unknown items in the post from companies and then stream the unravelling of these items – unboxing them – over a live feed, accompanied by an in-depth analysis of the item’s features, functionality, and overall performance, thereby providing a detailed and authentic review for prospective customers (Bhattacharya & Dhingra 2023). Through showcasing the product and its packaging engagingly, unboxing videos have helped to establish emotional connections between brands and buyers, which in turn drive sales (Gustafson 2021), in addition to giving prospective customers the digital experience of a product, outside of highly scripted and staged marketing tactics.
These insights became the key motivations behind what I later developed into my own method: Unboxing.
What is Unboxing?
In the context of my research, Unboxing is a creative elicitation tool designed to gather narratives from contributors for a doctoral study. By drawing on visual inquiry, photo elicitation and product marketing principles (Glaw et al. 2017, Roddy et al. 2019), Unboxing seeks to stimulate discussions with Black Caribbean women about their experiences of accessing, providing and navigating sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH) in the UK. As someone who’s worked in the field of SRH for over 15 years – most recently as a sexual health advisor for the NHS – I was aware of the deep sensitivity around topics relating to SRH and its potential to stir up painful or even traumatic memories and events, particularly as previous research indicates that Black women continue to experience poorer SRH outcomes (Knight M et al. 2022, Perro et al. 2022, Marlow et al. 2015).
With this in mind, I did not want to create a process that left Black women feeling exposed, drained, or reduced to recounting stories of harm or discomfort without the tools to support them to explore the context behind these inequities sensitively. Additionally, my lived experience as a Black woman provided me with a layer of consciousness about these realities. For me as a researcher, adopting moments of active reflexivity that allowed me to question, acknowledge and utilise my positionality to create a culturally sensitive way to engage contributors in conversations, became central to the research design process (Collins 2009, Madison 2011).
Applying Unboxing in practice
I created a set of ‘Unboxing Cards’ bearing pictures and phrases relating to SRH and Black women, choosing the images and words on these cards with the help of Black female colleagues who worked in the healthcare sector. I then numbered these cards and drew up a separate sheet with definitions for each. During one-to-one semi-structured interviews, contributors were engaged through a snowballing recruitment approach. A study advertisement flyer was shared on public and private social networks, accompanied by a link to a sign-up sheet to register for the study. Once accepted to participate, each contributor was briefed on the approach and asked to select 10 numbers from 1 to 26. As they chose the cards, I would share the picture, phrases and/or objects that came from the box, and we would discuss the thoughts, feelings and reflections that surfaced.
For example, instead of asking a contributor to describe their experience of being in a medical setting, we would have a conversation following an image of a waiting room, to which they might respond ‘cold’, ‘sterile’, ‘clinical’, indicating their distaste for medicalised environments, potentially leading to conversation about the need for medical care to exist in community spaces alongside trusted leaders. Another example might be that of ‘breast’, to which some contributors would respond with ideas of ‘motherhood’ and ‘feeding’, while others spoke of ‘pleasure’, indicating notions of sensuality, enjoyment, and intercourse. This activity created distance between contributors and their memories, allowing safer, more playful, and open-ended reflection. The materials in the box acted as catalysts, sparking associations and memories more indirectly than asking people to recount events on demand.
The results
‘Unboxing’ symbolises peeling back layers, unpacking complex emotions, and revealing insights that may otherwise stay hidden. By applying this creative method, I gathered insightful narratives that provided three thematic chapters for my PhD in response to the overarching research question: What are the experiences of Black Caribbean women accessing, providing and navigating SRH in the UK? A chapter titled Hopes and Dreams offers insights about what improvements are needed to achieve equitable SRH outcomes for Black Caribbean women; Empowerment and Healing shares how contributors create and advocate for safer spaces that foster community support and long-term healing to address their SRH needs; and finally Hindrances and Hurdles reveals the negative encounters contributors have experienced within SRH, that have contributed to medical mistrust, disengagement and fear of the healthcare system and SRH services.
Witnessing how applying Unboxing shifted the dynamic between me as a researcher and my relationship with the contributor has been particularly powerful. Instead of positioning the Black Caribbean women as subjects required to deliver painful testimonies, it created a much more collaborative and imaginative space, which allowed the reflections to develop organically, reducing the burden of contributors having to perform trauma and opening up space for joy, humour, and even surprise. Many contributors described the process as liberating and validating because it gave them new ways of seeing and naming their own experiences, particularly in a space with someone who looked like them and could relate, compared to feeling boxed in by clinical or research-driven language and approaches. As a researcher, this approach also challenged me to listen differently, to attend not only to the words spoken by contributors, but also to pay attention to the silences, the gestures, and the sparks of recognition that arose when creativity entered the room.
Sharing Unboxing
Currently, I am in the final stages of my PhD pre-viva. While the main themes reflect my current study, they may evolve over the next few months, though the overall sentiment will remain the same. Still, I have had the opportunity to share my methodology at the 2024 Black/African Feminisms Conference in Toronto, Canada, as part of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), in addition to previously sharing my methodological approach at the Glasgow School of Business and Society (GSBS) Post Graduate Research (PGR) working out lunchtime seminar in 2025. I have also contributed an abstract to the 27th Congress of the World Association for Sexual Health in Brisbane, Australia, despite being unable to attend. I look forward to sharing my work further soon.
Unboxing is a method and a philosophy of care in research. It reminds us that research can be generated through play, that creativity can hold profound truths, and that research can be designed to protect the wellbeing of those we seek to engage, while still producing meaningful knowledge. It has become a way of centring humanity in a field that too often reduces people to data points.
Note of thanks
Special thanks to my Supervisory team at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) namely Dr Karla Perez Portilla, Dr Anne Chapman and Dr Bipasha Ahmed. Together they have been incredibly helpful and supportive in developing my work and ideas along the doctoral journey. Their encouragement has challenged me to think more critically and confidently about my work. Their perspectives and guidance have helped me to refine my ideas and grow as both a researcher and a thinker. I’m truly thankful for their expertise and dedication, which have been invaluable in shaping the depth and direction of my research. Although it hasn’t been as an easy road, we are so close to the finish line. Also huge thanks to the contributors of this study, namely Afia, Cesar, Diamond, Dion, Fe-Line, Hakeema, HF, Liv, Pepper, Robin, Sarah, Sasha, Suraya, Tia, and Zoe (all pseudonyms). Each of you offered your time, stories, and reflections with honesty and care, profoundly shaping this work. I’m deeply grateful to those who trusted the Unboxing process with me. Your insights, courage, and lived experiences gave depth and meaning to the research, reminding us of the power of shared truth and collective voice. This study would not have been possible without your generosity, openness, and commitment to making your experiences count toward a more just and equitable future.
About the author
Rianna Raymond-Williams is in the final phase of her PhD at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), exploring the experiences of Black Caribbean women accessing, providing and navigating sexual and reproductive healthcare (SRH) in the UK. She has had a long career in SRH spanning 15 years. She previously worked as a Sexual Health Advisor (HA) for the NHS, providing STI and HIV results to patients, partner notification, safer sex counselling, and contraceptive advice. Rianna received the 2024 Three Minute Thesis People’s Choice Award at GCU. She impressed the judges and the audience with her ability to explain her study clearly, engagingly, and in a way that highlighted its significance and impact.
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