How We Can Connect with Loved Ones Now and Later with Digital Legacies
How do you want to be remembered when you're gone?
For some, such a vulnerable question may be anxiety-inducing. But for TSRB researcher and Georgia Tech Human-Centered Computing Ph.D. student, Soonho Kwon, this heavy question was a catalyst into the world of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), a multi-disciplinary field that explores the relationship between people and technology.
On Halloween 2022, in Seoul, South Korea, over 150 people died in a catastrophic crowd surge during a holiday celebration. Most of the victims were young adults, ages 20 to 30, and even teens. The nation and people across the globe mourned the lives lost in the disaster. Kwon lived only a few bus stops away from the location of the crowd surge. He was already researching death-related HCI, reimaging digital commemorative systems after funeral homes shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, seeing people his own age and younger pass so tragically and unexpectedly made Kwon realize that the weight and reaction to the death of a young person is undeniably unique.
This realization called forth Kwon and a team of researchers from Underwood International College at Yonsei University to learn more about how death tech, a field previously focused on older and terminally ill groups and unemotional, administrative tasks could be specialized towards young adults. The result was their paper, “Digital Legacy Systems for Young Adults: Emphasizing Relationship-Oriented Perspectives and Physical Artifacts in Death Preparation.”
Digital Heirlooms
“A legacy is something that is left behind by a person once they pass away. But as we move into a more digitized society… everything we do will leave a digital footprint, becoming a form of legacy which we have not seen before,” said Kwon. Like traditional ways of managing physical heirlooms or assets, a digital legacy system seeks to organize one’s digital footprint after death, including tasks such as managing social media accounts, digital assets, and even sending posthumous messages to loved ones.
How to manage a digital footprint when someone passes away is becoming an increasingly prevalent question; however, according to Kwon, it has primarily been asked for older adults and focused on administrative tasks. Kwon identified the tragic, untimely death of a young person, and its emotional aftermath as an important but often overlooked design space. His research revealed that young adults use digital legacy systems primarily to fulfill emotional goals and that such usage can provoke existential reflection and foster improved mental health through a renewed appreciation of life in the present.
What do Young Adults Want?
“Digital Legacy Systems for Young Adults” was conducted in three phases. First, the team gave participants a series of activities in the form of postcards to learn about what young adults in South Korea valued in a legacy system. Ten young adults received the postcard kits, asking them to consider what they wish to leave behind, who they would leave it to, and why they made these decisions. The last portion of this phase included an interview. Then, in the second phase, the team designed three digital legacy systems based on the findings of the first phase, titled My Life in Exhibition, Final Date, and Letter Across Time. For each design concept, they created a pamphlet introducing its key features and shared it with 23 Korean young adults. They asked the young adults which they were most drawn to, the pros and cons for each system, and if they had any additional comments. Most participants preferred Letter Across Time, which was then made into a high-fidelity prototype.
“We intentionally made a system that revolves around personal relationships, which was a key insight we drew from the first phase of the study” said Kwon, describing the prototype. Letter Across Time helps users create personalized letters using photographs from their phone and produces a catered legacy package, including personalized written messages, video messages, photos, and gifts, which is physically mailed to the recipient once the user passes away. Participants favored this system because of its emphasis on private one-on-one interactions and employment of physical objects as a means of comforting loved ones.
Kwon’s previous study on reimagining social media as a commemorative platform identified three main components of what people valued in digital legacy systems: first, the previously mentioned administrative side of digital legacy systems, including will and asset management, as well as funeral planning. The second goal was far more emotional, with participants wanting to console loved ones through letters or photographs. Finally, people wanted to preserve or memorialize their legacy through virtual memorials.
Although the focus in commercial digital legacy systems has primarily been administrative, Kwon and the team found that people — especially young adults — are more concerned with the emotional element of the technology, as the untimely passing often entailed significantly deeper emotional toll experienced by the remaining friends and families. In a preliminary survey prior to this study, Kwon and the team found that young adults reported they did not want their legacy preserved digitally, out of concern that their parents and grandparents would not be able to connect with it as they would with a physical legacy. “When we were looking at younger people's legacies, they were very concerned about their parents, or the remaining older family members, because an untimely death is so tragic [for them],” said Kwon. Conversely, older adults wanted their legacy preserved in a digital medium, so it could be understood by their young family members.
Young adults’ hesitance towards using digital preservation systems was also found in Kwon’s work on “Digital Legacy Systems for Young Adults.” “I’m not really into digital stuff. I feel like there should be something tangible and having something digital feels too lightweight. [...] I wonder if people will find comfort in it when it’s conveyed to them,” said a participant during their interview for the study.
“These reflections draw our attention to the importance of critically analyzing the role of technology in legacy curation. Legacy curation involves the complex emotions, expectations, and experiences of both those who pass away and those who remain. We must therefore carefully and critically ask whether technology should be involved in this sphere in the first place, what its appropriate role might be, how these experiences differ across cultures, age groups, and types of relationships, and how we might bring these insights together to create systems that meaningfully engage with the ‘humanness’ of death in a respectful way — rather than simply presenting a system that is ‘convenient,’” said Kwon.
“Send Now”
The team not only looked at digital legacy systems’ potential to connect grieving loved ones and organize digital footprints after life, but also at how they impact the living people who are creating them. One feature of the prototype app that reflected the idea of well-being through well-dying was called “Send Now.” This action prompted users to send the catered legacy package immediately rather than posthumously. “Many participants shared that discussing their death and legacy made them realize how precious their present life is and how deeply they love the people around them,” said Kwon.
However, the “Send Now” feature was not the only aspect that encouraged young users to express love and gratitude in the present moment. The very process of reflecting on photographs and memories through Letter Across Time prompted participants to express similar sentiments. One study participant shared, “For the sake of those who will be left behind in the future, I want to express my love for them a lot right now so that I won’t regret it later.”
The Things that Make Us Human
The presence of technology amidst the deeply human experience is the heart of Kwon’s work. With the digital legacies project, Kwon aimed to make existential thinking more accessible and less intimidating, so young adults could experience the gracious outlook that results from contemplation.
The team is now working independently on other research and have reached a stopping point with the digital legacies project. However, Kwon continues to ask questions about how technology can be used to emphasize what makes us human rather than suppress it. One avenue of his research focuses on how spirituality and AI intersect, with his Prix Ars Electronica-awarded project, AI Fortune-Teller, where he juxtaposes an AI agent with a traditional Korean fortuneteller to provoke questions about how and why we reach out to agents beyond our comprehension in the face of uncertainty. His work also proposes provocative spiritual AI systems that raise questions about how human agency can be retained and respected in human–AI interactions.
“Many of the technologies we use today were developed under capital-driven goals of efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. But human life is much, much more than that. It is an assemblage of care, love, relationships, and emotions — the things that make us human. As technologies increasingly permeate the intimate and vulnerable realms of our lives, the strand of research I pursue as an HCI researcher seeks to highlight and incorporate the emotional, non-efficient, non-productive, and non-capitalistic aspects of our lives, and to translate them into the technologies we develop.”