Master’s Research Project (MRP)
Visit the draft site here.
Metoidioplasty (or “meta”) is a gender-affirming surgery that creates a penis from the clitoris. Meta patients can customize their surgery by adding on subprocedures, like building a scrotum or lengthening their urethra.
Patients’ top priority from meta is to feel affirmed in their gender identity. They get there by changing how their genitals function and appear. Since appearance matters, it’s important to visualize all of the options available for meta.
Despite the need for illustrated patient education tools, the tools for meta are quite limited. In their absence patients may struggle to set realistic expectations for results, prepare for recovery, and provide informed consent.
My project partner Grace Gibson and I are developing MetaMorphosis, an illustrated guide to metoidioplasty at Women’s College Hospital. The site guides patients through the pre-, intra-, and post-operative stages of meta, with an emphasis on surgical results, recovery, and complications.
Our primary goal is to help trans and gender-diverse people navigate the complexities of metoidioplasty.
Check out the animation Grace and I created for the site:
Output
Illustrated educational website for metoidioplasty patients
Research Team
Student Researchers: Winter Kraemer & Grace Gibson
Content Advisor: Dr. Alexi Millman (Women’s College Hospital)
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Shelley Wall, Prof. Shehryar (Shay) Saharan (University of Toronto)
BOYS Tool
A key feature of our site is The Build-Out-Your-Surgery (BOYS) tool, an interactive gallery of surgical results on different skin tones and body sizes. The BOYS tool shows patients what the surgery could look like on a body similar to their own, which helps with building realistic expectations and making associations between aesthetic and functional changes.
These were some of the very first sketches I created when developing the BOYS tool idea:
Since then the tool has changed somewhat, but the original idea is the same: help people see themselves represented.
Since then the tool has changed somewhat, but the original idea is the same: help people see themselves represented.
Timeline & Planning
Good planning is critical to the success of a long-term project. We had ambitious goals for MetaMorphosis, considering we had just over a year to complete it. We created a timeline and a project scope in the early stages of our project to ensure that we remained on track:
Good planning is critical to the success of a long-term project. We had ambitious goals for MetaMorphosis, considering we had just over a year to complete it. We created a timeline and a project scope in the early stages of our project to ensure that we remained on track:
Research
Our research began with a literature review and media audit to understand the current landscape of metoidioplasty resources. We developed a project proposal based on our understanding of the gaps in communication for metoidioplasty patient education.
The main finding: Communicating the outcomes and risks of different types of metoidioplasty is critical to the shared decision-making process between the patient and their healthcare provider, and currently, there are insufficient resources to do so.
You can read the proposal in full here.
Pre-production
A great deal of time and effort went into pre-production: understanding the gaps in communication and mapping out the solutions. In our community-centred design research course, we created empathy maps, user personas, and context scenarios based on our literature review and conversations with community members (i.e. patients who wanted or had had metoidioplasty).
Throughout Autumn 2025 we developed our pre-production design document, which acted as a guide for production time. You can read the full document here.
Community Research
One of the most important aspects of our work is community involvement. We want this resource to be for trans people, by trans people. In order to keep MetaMorphosis rooted in the community’s needs, we set out to consult with meta patients at Women’s College Hospital. Our goal was to learn about the lived experience of the surgery so that we could share key points of advice on the site. This draws upon the pre-existing dynamics of mutual aid in the trans community: sharing stories so others know what to expect and know they’re not alone.
We applied for research ethics board approval and subsequently conducted two focus groups. Patients told us how they felt about the site and we learned about their experiences with metoidioplasty so far. Currently, we are conducting a qualitative analysis of focus group transcripts for future case study use and integration of patient stories into the website.
In order to communicate metoidioplasty to patients, we needed to familiarize ourselves with the metoidioplasty techniques employed at WCH. We had the opportunity to observe and document several meta procedures in the OR; performed by our content advisor, Dr. Alexi Millman. My sketches of the process are the precursor to the animation clip shown above. The rest of the surgery will be animated (currently in progress).