Technology and the human lifespan: learning from the bereaved

• Published in: Interactions (New York, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2011-05, Vol.18 (3), p.26-29
• Main Author: Massimi, Michael
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Death & dying; Design engineering; Designers; Grief; Human-computer interaction; Studies; Technology adoption
• ISSN: 1072-5520; 1558-3449
• DOI: 10.1145/1962438.1962447

As personal technologies evolve, people continually have new opportunities to capture and share their lives. Mobile phones, Facebook, and Twitter have joined elder forms of communication to form a varied technological landscape. Designers often imagine "blue sky" scenarios, in which the envisioned user's life is stable and suffused with health and happiness: a kind of designer's optimism. As technology becomes more personal and intimate, there is a need for increased acknowledgement and accommodation of the ups and downs that occur from birth to death. As a key example, HCI researchers and designers have recently begun to tackle the difficult issue of death. In this article, the authors briefly describe some of the work that they have conducted in this area, with a focus on sharing the stories of the bereaved and their experiences with technology. In so doing, they hope to illustrate the importance of thinking about the entirety of the human lifespan when designing personal technologies.