While most people usually tend to avoid thinking about their death, it can be beneficial to reflect on it. As technology is further integrated in our lives, HCI needs to consider that users eventually die. A concrete example for this concern is digital legacy. From a perspective of existential HCI and Thanatosensitivity, this thesis explores how young adults experience their own mortality and how they might be encouraged to reflect on their lives by engaging in their digital legacy. Subsequently, this exploration led to conducting expert interviews, sending out cultural probes, and sharing a collaborative matrix. Synthesizing and ideating on the gathered material concluded in a low-fidelity prototype that was tested by six users. The initial user feedback and individual workshops with three participants led to further explorations in the form of two workshops – one for ideation, the other for analysis. The thesis concludes in a series of conceptual design proposals that act as ground for discussion with implications for design opportunities and future research alongside an analysis of key findings.

Digital Immortality or Not?The aim of this thesis was to explore how we might be stewards for our post-life digital self after physical death, and to provide a new interaction experience in the form of a tangible, digital, or service design solution. Prior to the project kick-off secondary research, including academic research papers, analogous services, and existing projects, was distilled to form topical questions. These questions were then presented in many casual topical conversations and revealed that although post-life digital asset management awareness is increasing, little consideration exists on how to reflect legacies into the future long after death. A second stage of primary research included multiple on-site investigations, paired with in-person interviews and a quantitative online survey. Insights and understandings then lead to initial concepts that were tested to address distinctive qualities between tangible and digital design solutions. The main findings included that although people want to be remembered long after they die, current methods of tangible and digital content management can not sufficiently support the reflection of legacies long into the future. In conclusion, this thesis argues that to become part of an everlasting legacy, the interaction experience can leverage commonalities and shared moments from life events captured in digital media. These points of connections rely on associated metadata (i.e. keyword tags, date stamps, geolocation) to align relevant moments that transcend time and generations. The solution proposed here harnesses the benefits that both digital and tangible media afford and are presented as a tablet interface with an associated tangible token used as a connection key.

Technology has become closely interwoven with our lives, positioning us as authors of large and diverse databases. These extensive collections of digital assets will be left behind as digital legacies after users eventually die. Addressing the inevitability of death in digital systems, including considerations for pre-configuring, or accessing these digital legacies, calls for thanatosensitivity in design. As a relatively new field, thanatosensitive HCI research on digital legacy has primarily focused on data storage and security as well as social networking systems. However, people might create online content that can be of relevance postmortem beyond the next of kin and private network, such as contributions to digital commons communities. In my research, I explore challenges and opportunities for thanatosensitive design in the context of digital commons communities by examining two design cases as samples of that area: GitHub and the Free Music Archive. Through a process inspired by programmatic design research, I followed a mixed method approach including literature reviews, interviews, workshop sessions, and iterative design synthesis. The outcome is a guidebook consisting of annotated portfolios with design exemplars for each design case, accessible to different stakeholders for further collaboration. Drawing on the annotations and intersections between both cases, I frame the knowledge contributions of this study as insights from the design process, aiming to provide directions for future research on thanatosensitivity in systems for digital commons contributions.