Define
Designing a memorial—especially one in a digital space—isn’t just about tools or aesthetics. It’s about ethics. About storytelling. About understanding who we’re speaking for, and who we’re speaking to.
Once I gathered initial research, I moved into the definition phase: identifying my core audiences, values, and design principles. This is when the thesis stopped being a concept and started becoming a real design challenge.
Meet the People Behind the Process
I developed several personas based on my interviews and survey data. They weren’t hypothetical—they were composites of real people with deeply personal experiences.
These personas helped me stay anchored. I wasn’t designing for abstract “users.” I was designing for grievers. For storytellers. For future ancestors.
The Problem With the Timeline
As I started mapping out user needs and emotional goals, one pattern kept standing out: how constrained memory becomes when it’s forced into a timeline. We scroll, we skim, we see only the highlight reel. Social media platforms are built for consumption, not reflection.
That realization led me to a foundational shift. Instead of treating memory as a list of posts, I would treat it as terrain. A space to walk through. A path that unfolds.
Defining My Design Principles
From here, I sketched out the principles that would guide my design:
Authenticity over Realism: Avoid uncanny AI recreations. Lean into texture, sound, and fragments.
Agency over Automation: Let users explore. Don’t force interactions.
Reflection over Performance: This isn’t about likes or public mourning. It’s about private memory and shared meaning.
And most importantly, I chose to use my own story for the prototype. Not because I think my life is especially noteworthy, but because it allowed me to ask better questions—and test the emotional stakes of digital memorialization firsthand.