Field Guide: Making Lived Uncertainty Interpretable in Women’s Return-to-Play

Women returning to grassroots football after motherhood navigate uncertainty not only about physical readiness, but also
confidence, time, childcare, belonging, and whether participation can be sustained as circumstances change. These uncertainties
interact and evolve, yet conventional return-to-play approaches predominantly emphasise measurable recovery and progression
towards readiness. We investigate how visualisation can represent this form of lived uncertainty without reducing personal experiences
to probabilistic estimates or prescribing a normative pathway. Guided by the Empathy-Driven Visualisation Framework (EDVF) and
Five Design Sheets (FDS), we followed an iterative, human-centred design process grounded in direct engagement with a grassroots
women’s football community. This process informed the development of Field Guide, a narrative visualisation representing return through
revisitable participation states, multiple trajectories, shared experiences, and thematic exploration. We subsequently conducted an
online participant study with 39 mothers involved in grassroots football. Reflexive thematic analysis identified five interacting dimensions
of lived uncertainty: physical, emotional, temporal, practical, and social, while participants’ accounts reinforced return-to-play as a
non-linear process involving pauses, changing circumstances, and repeated attempts to return. Preliminary evaluation of Field Guide
indicated perceived value in encountering other mothers’ experiences, particularly through validation, normalisation, and reflection.
Rather than predicting readiness or defining a successful return, Field Guide explores how narrative visualisation can make multiple
possible futures visible while preserving the personal and socially situated nature of uncertainty. We contribute a characterisation
of lived uncertainty in return-to-play, an account of its representation through an iterative narrative visualisation design, and design
considerations for making lived uncertainty more interpretable, integrable, and accessible within sensitive, human-centred contexts.