Keywords

1 Introduction

Death is an unavoidable event for any living being, but only humans are aware of their finitude, so they perform rites of passage and mourning. These rituals play a central role in all human cultures and in Western societies they usually include tributes to the dead by means of wakes, funerals, burials, prayers, and the construction of memorials.

These death-related cultural practices are also impacted by the fast technological innovation that we experience nowadays, which affects not only the way we live, but also how we die or face the death of our beloved ones. Therefore, expressions of grief and funeral rites in general are now beginning to be transferred to the virtual world. Applications that implement the concept of online memorials (herein called digital memorials) are becoming increasingly common on the web. In these systems, users are empowered to create a memorial for someone who died and to pay him/her homage in the form of virtual messages, flowers, candles or even prayers [1,2,3,4,5].

However, there is still a lack of studies about technical, cultural and legal issues regarding death in the digital space. This includes the need for research on users’ expectations and intentions when interacting with digital memorials. As stated by Brubaker, Hayes and Dourish [6] and Lopes, Maciel and Pereira [5], when these applications are incorporated into the Social Web, a network of living users created about a digital memorial, that is, a dead user’s profile. Besides, digital memorials can also be connected to one another, so that living and deceased users compose a complex network, where posthumous interaction [3], i.e., interaction with deceased users’ data, takes place.

Our literature review shows that there is current research on mourning practices mediated by technology and on the role of digital legacy; however, solutions that consider human aspects in their design are still required. This topic considers challenges in some communities, such as reported in the GranDIHC-BR Technical Report [7] and in the GranDSI-BR Technical Report [8].

In order to assist designers to project digital memorials, practical recommendations will be presented in this article considering the technical and cultural specificities of addressing death and mourning in the digital environment. Some of these recommendations will be illustrated by prototypes of a possible design of a social network for digital memorials.

2 Literature Review

The concept of digital memorials derives from the concept of memorials in the physical world, where concrete monuments are used to symbolize and honor the memory of a person or event [9]. According to Riechers [2], all personal memorials arise from common human needs: paying homage to the dead and comforting people in mourning.

Therefore, memorials in the physical world have many cultural purposes, especially those related to religious and ritualistic practices, far beyond the instrumental function of containing the body of a deceased person. One famous example of a memorial that plays different cultural roles, not only as a place for mourning and honoring, but also as a landmark for tourism and as a constant image for political speeches, is the National September 11 Memorial (see Fig. 1) in United States.

Fig. 1.
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(Source: author’s archive)

Memorial for the victims of the 09/11 terrorist attack (New York).

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The practice of paying tributes to the dead is evidently also transposed to the virtual universe, because many users feel the need to express their feelings for deceased people through technologies [10]. The materiality of physical memorials plays a central role in the process of recollection and mourning: flowers, photos, candles and other objects used in real-world wakes and funerals metaphorically represent the absence of the deceased [11]. This also holds true in digital memorials, e.g. in the FindAGrave website [12], which allows users to leave virtual candles, flowers or messages to any deceased [1].

In posthumous interaction through digital memorials, the deceased becomes either the element around which users interact or the recipient of messages and tributes from the living users. This kind of process can be seen both in web platforms created with other purposes and in those specifically created to support memorialization services.

Some social networks are now adding digital memorial profiles to their services. In Facebook, dead users’ profiles can be changed into digital memorials either if the system automatically detects the user’s death, or if other users notify the system. Campos et al. [13] pointed out some relevant elements of Facebook digital memorials, such as the possibility to name an heir or the request for the deletion of the deceased user’s account.

In addition to the systems that were/are being adapted to support digital grief and digital memorialization, new web applications are being developed specifically focusing on services of this nature.

According to Riechers [2], digital memorial websites have been around since 1996, with the release of the Virtual Memorials platform [14]. According to Brubaker et al. [6], “these sites users can post slideshows, videos, texts, audios and buy gifts prints, like balloons and cake to celebrate a birthday. These practices of sharing memories allow the bereaved to preserve the postmortem identity of their loved ones”. Thus, they create a kind of “digital limbo” between life and death [15], redefining interaction practices somehow involving the dead. The creation of specific platforms where living and dead coexist leads Brubaker and Vertesi [16] to consider deceased users not as a special subgroup, but rather as a case of “extreme users”, whose needs pose special challenges for software design.

Results of a qualitative study of tombs, tombstones and physical memorials from four cemeteries from different cultures [17] identify expressive components that must be considered in the design process of digital memorials. Designers must explore the possibilities of representing: the religious identity of the deceased, their possible multiple identities (public and/or private ones), the significant temporal markers of their lives, and their social, political and economic status, among others. A culture-sensitive approach is also important during the design process, aiming at honoring the deceased’s values and avoiding cultural taboos.

Some other studies on digital memorials have been carried out focusing on systems connected to QR-Code tags attached to tombstones. According to Cann [18], “QR codes transfer the dead from the cemetery to the realm of the living by giving the living a connection to the deceased that can be accessed anywhere.” For Maciel et al. [19], “In general, QR codes in cemeteries permit the access to digital memorials, where different kinds of data about the deceased (photos, videos, textual information etc.) can be found”. These authors analyzed users’ perceptions of digital memorials linked to graves via QR Code technology in a cemetery space. One of the problems evidenced by their study was the lack of information in deceased users’ profiles. Because data are not collaboratively inserted, depending on specific stakeholders to be available (e.g., the family, or the company that manages the software), the lack of information is commonly noticed. Additionally, the information architecture impacted negatively on navigability and accessibility on mobile devices—usability and/or communicability tests might help identifying and fixing such kind of problems. Additionally, the possibility of integrating these systems with other social tools could add value to memorials, promoting their adoption and usage.

Whereas the aforementioned studies analyze different general issues about digital memorials, our literature review found only a few studies presenting initial guidelines, scaffolds or recommendations for the design of these applications [4, 17]. Publications of that nature would be vital to lead designers to more satisfactory projects of this type of application, since it is necessary to consider issues such as users’ beliefs and the different representations of death [20] espoused by different social groups.

In the following section, the research methodology of the present study is explained. Next, we show the recommendations developed and the prototypes created for the discussion of these recommendations.

3 Methodology

Firstly, a literature review was carried out on topics such as interaction with posthumous data [21, 22], beliefs and taboos related to death [10, 11, 20, 22,23,24], digital memorial pages on Facebook [5, 6, 13, 25] and specific environments for digital memorials [1, 2].

Next, we searched the Brazilian social web for digital memorials. The following platforms were found: iHeaven [26], Saudade Eterna [27], and Memorial Digital [28]. Due to technical problems in the latter, we registered in the first two platforms, and explored them to understand their basic operational procedures.

Then, two studies were carried out on iHeaven and Saudade Eterna. The first study consisted of an investigation of both systems in the light of social web elements [21, 29]. By means of Ethnography [30], we were able to collect data from the software and perform a qualitative analysis of the functional aspects proposed by Maciel [21], Maciel, Roque and Garcia [31], Smith [29].

The second study, in the iHeaven platform, consisted of interaction tests with users faced with digital memorials for the first time. The interaction tests aimed to understand how users feel when interacting with this type of application. 29 participants, from 18 to 30 years old, did the test. The tests were individually answered and were composed of two stages: first, a list of activities that the users should perform within the software; then, a questionnaire to be answered after the interaction with the digital memorials.

From the researchers’ observations during the tests and users’ replies to the questionnaires, it was possible to better understand how they feel when interacting with this type of application. Partial results of these studies are available in Lopes, Maciel and Pereira [3], Lopes et al. [4, 5].

As a final step, a semiotic inspection [32] of the communicative cultural perspectives in death-related interactive systems was carried out. Super Lachaise, an open-source application that supports visits to the French cemetery of Père-Lachaise and is available for download at Apple Store, was explored. Then, as a triangulation step of the research, the results were compared to those of a previous study on a Brazilian digital memorial – Memoriall [34] – a system connected to QR-Code tags attached to tombstones located at the Consolação Cemetery (São Paulo, Brazil) [19]. The main contributions of the paper are available in Leitão, Pereira and Maciel [33]) and aim at helping designers of death-related systems: a. define the interface mediation between users and contents from a foreign culture; and b. organize and express these contents.

From the investigation of death-related interactive systems and the data obtained through the qualitative analysis in the light of social web elements, together with the results obtained in the investigative tests, practical recommendations for the design of digital memorials were created, as presented in the next section. Such recommendations were prototyped using the software Balsamiq Mockups. These recommendations and the prototypes might help software engineers, system developers and HCI designers develop digital memorials with a view to technical and cultural aspects inherent to posthumous interaction.

4 Recommendations for the Design of Digital Memorials in the Social Web

This section presents recommendations for the design of digital memorials [5]. Designers should try to follow them with a view to: meeting users’ expectations regarding this kind of social software; ensuring that all types of users will have a satisfactory interaction with the system; preserving the deceased user’s reputation; and promoting awareness of the cultural diversity of death-related domain.

4.1 Modeling Social Networks Elements [6, 13, 17, 21, 29, 31, 33]

This section goes over the elements that characterize social networks, suggesting techniques to implement them in the realm of digital memorials.

  • Identity: There must be a remarkable distinction between living users’ profiles and digital memorials. In the case of a social network that deals with data of deceased users, differentiating the identities of the living and the dead is highly advisable for the sake of interaction. It is also important to considerer multiples identities of deceased users (e.g. names and nicknames used in professional and/or informal settings).

  • Content: In a digital memorial, designers must decide how to balance data about the life of death users, information about their death and the space for expression of mourning. This balance generates different impacts on users’ interaction, such as the more intense emotional effects involved in reading users’ statements of grief when compared to those generated by reading the biography of the deceased.

  • Relationships: In a social network involving profiles for living users and memorials, there must be relationships among users, among users and memorials, and among memorials. There can also be relationships among users, physical and digital memorials (e.g. QR code technologies tagged on tombs of cemeteries). Such modeling opens up a range of possibilities, such as the creation of tools that generate family trees from these relationships data, or the creation of digital tools to mediate users’ physical or virtual experiences and interaction on physical memorials

  • Chat: In purely scientific terms, dialogue can occur only among the living, so a chat tool only makes sense for conversations between living users’ profiles. However, a functionality to privately send messages to a memorial can be implemented, considering that this one-way communication can have symbolic and sentimental value for some people.

  • Groups: Digital memorials can be considered forms of grouping users who had some relationship with the deceased. Therefore, the modeling of digital memorials should be thought of as in “communities of interest”. Users can also be interested in creating specific groups, such as members of a family, friends of a deceased user etc.

  • Privacy Levels and Permissions: There must be a design project of users’ and groups’ permissions with a view to: generating content about the deceased, collaborating on the edition of the profile, posting data, files, statements, editing privacy of data, messages and statements, etc. Different or equal levels of privacy and of permissions can be implemented.

  • Reputation: There must be ways to increase the reputation of a digital memorial through messages on its “wall” (i.e. a virtual space where messages can be posted and seen by other users), by adding pictures and videos of the deceased, or by adding events to its timeline. According to Brubaker et al. [6], such forms of tributes help preserve the post-mortem identity of the deceased. Besides, Lopes et al. [4] state that users value the possibility to increase a memorial’s reputation.

  • Recommendation: A social network of digital memorials should recommend to its users not only the profiles of other users they might be friends with, but also memorials they might want to connect with or pay homage to.

  • Presence: This element should only be modeled for living users, as digital memorials cannot have an “online” status.

  • Sharing: In this kind of social network, different elements can be shared, such as pictures and videos of the deceased, messages published on the wall of a memorial, or even a whole memorial itself. In addition to that, users should be able to share, in other social networks, the interactions they participated in on the digital memorials network. Such sharing can be explicit, through network sharing buttons, or implicit, by exporting activities into other networks (but without open notification that data have been exported from one network to another).

  • Volition: In a social network for digital memorials, the system should model volition, ensuring that, after the death of an account owner, his/her desires are fulfilled regarding the destination of his/her data and the management of his/her digital memorials. As suggested by Maciel [21], designing solutions for that problem is essential, and there are several options for dealing with posthumous data.

4.2 Ensuring the Honoring of the Deceased [4,5,6, 33]

This section draws attention to some precautions to take during the design process aiming to ensure the honoring of deceased users.

  • Digital memorials should have a wall: in the interaction tests, we noticed that many users think that writing a message is the most appropriate way to pay tribute to the deceased. In the tests, several users were uneasy when interacting with other less conventional forms of homage.

  • Consider content curation or moderation: although collaboration is a key factor on social networks, deceased’s data are sensitive. Public exposure of personal information and inappropriate statements or photos posted on the interface are some of the problems that may threaten the honoring of the deceased. Defining different users’ roles in the network and ensuring a curation process (even a collaborative one) can minimize negative effects.

  • Be cautious when using buttons: in this type of social network, the keyword for a button that performs a direct interaction with a digital memorial should be chosen carefully. Users can find it weird to “like” a memorial (or any other frivolous manifestation of appreciation). Some also find it disrespectful to click on buttons to perform religious manifestations, such as to “pray” for the memorial.

  • Allow the sharing of tributes in the social network or in other networks: users feel like publicizing that they have paid homage to a digital memorial, either by sharing this piece of information with their friends in the digital memorials social network, or in other social networks. If the system has been designed as a social network, this recommendation is related to the abovementioned possibility of “sharing”.

  • Design with users: designers should seek to understand users’ expectations for the application, so that the system is responsive and sensitive to users’ values.

4.3 Promoting Awareness of the Cultural Diversity of Death-Related Domain [4, 5, 20, 33]

This section stresses the central role of culture on death-related interactive systems, such as digital memorials.

  • Bring culture into the design since the beginning of the process: as death, its representations, practices and rituals are variable and strongly dependent on culture, designers must consider digital memorials as culture-sensitive systems. Designers must previously reflect on which cultural variables they will model and how they will do that. Language is a key variable; religious symbols, funeral and burial rituals, and communicative condolence protocols are other relevant cultural variables in digital memorials.

  • Design for diversity: in this type of application, designers should consider that users have very different profiles [2, 35] and different conceptions of death [20]. It is also important to avoid that designers’ beliefs and taboos on death limit the solutions for the system (although beliefs always mediate our perceptions and influence our solutions). The customization of the system by users is highly recommended.

  • Explore possibilities, and, then, make choices: there are many possibilities to represent, express and communicate cultural content about death to users. So, there are also many different ways to engage users in multicultural experiences of dealing with death and mourning. However, there are limits to explore diversity. Only a few cultural perspectives can be anticipated and communicated within the interface. Sometimes, less is more. The risk of trying to embrace every cultural factor and perspective might lead to a system that fits no one. Designers should make intentional choices about how to deal with cultural dimension.

  • Communicate cultural perspective to users: since a system cannot be culturally comprehensive, it is important to make users aware of the cultural nature of the domain and of the cultural contexts available in the interactive system. Communicate through the interface what cultural perspective is therein adopted [36]. By doing so, designers can give users the cultural context they need for social interaction. For instance, a digital memorial can be available in many languages and can provide a high level of customization (e.g. different religious icons), aiming at cultural diversity. In this case, users can choose their own cultural context among many possibilities anticipated on the interface. On the other hand, a digital memorial could also express only a specific cultural perspective (a Buddhist digital memorial, for example), with cultural markers expressing how a specific social group represents death, with limited customization options. In this case, information about the cultural perspective adopted could help users to understand another culture, providing cultural context for the social interaction. In both cases users should be aware of cultural diversity.

  • Avoid vocabulary limited to a specific religion: In a system aimed at people with the most diverse religious affiliations (or even no religion at all), using vocabulary limited to specific religions may hinder the interaction. The noun “heaven”, for example, is not associated to post-mortem in many religions. If a limited vocabulary is used, users should be aware of the reasons behind these limits.

  • Allow users to customize the interface with icons of their religion: according to Maciel and Pereira [20], the symbols that represent death and death-related phenomena vary across different religions and creeds. For example, while Catholic users tend to ascribe symbolic meaning to tombs, Protestant users tend to assign higher significance to coffins, as analyzed by these authors. On the other hand, a Protestant user may feel like clicking a button to “pray” for a memorial, a form of interaction that maybe would not make sense for an atheist. Systems must be designed to allow users to change the symbols of the interface, especially when they relate to religious beliefs.

5 Prototyping

This section presents the prototypes made based on the aforementioned practical recommendations for the design of digital memorials. These prototypes can help human-computer interaction designers and software designers achieve a clearer vision of solutions for this type of application. Notice that the prototypes herein presented do not cover all the functionalities proposed in the recommendations.

Firstly, designers must reflect on the top-level culture-sensitive design strategy, considering, among others: (i) users’ profiles, needs and cultural backgrounds; and (ii) the cultural perspective to be adopted (the aimed scope of cultural diversity and the cultural variables involved) [17, 33]. In the prototypes presented, English is the language adopted, aiming to embrace a more cultural diversity of users, as it is more commonly used in cross-cultural social network communication. ‘Places’ are key cultural variables to provide contextual information about users: place of birth, places of death and burial, places visited, etc. On the other hand, ‘religion’ is not explicitly elicited as a variable. These options are not the only design choice, although they impact the ways users will be engaged in culture-sensitive interaction.

After the definition of the cultural perspective, systems functionalities can be prototyped. Figure 2 illustrates some of the prototype functions, so as to help the reader understand the figures that are next presented.

Fig. 2.
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A script of the prototype’s visualization.

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5.1 Products Generated

The first prototype generated was the user’s “Home” page, shown in Fig. 3. The interface consists of a section composed of “reminders” of important dates, such as friends’ birthdays or deceased users’ death anniversaries (memorial) (1); then, there are the updates and news about friends’ interactions with other users and memorials (2). At the end of the page, there are suggestions of digital memorials (3) and friends (4) to add, based on memorials and friends in common. The question mark icons (5) refer to help tabs, supposed to assist the user in case of questions about the tools. Item (6) concerns the area of system settings.

Fig. 3.
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The “Home” interface

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This interface also shows applications of practical recommendations presented in the previous section. The social networking element “recommendation” can be identified in (3) and (4), where the user receives recommendations from the system about memorials and profiles with which their friends have interacted. In addition to that, the element “sharing” and the recommendation “Allow the sharing of tributes in the social network or in other networks” are represented in (2), where the system allows the user to share public interactions he/she had with digital memorials or with other users.

Figure 4 presents the interface of a memorial that shows basic information about the deceased (1), such as data about places and dates of birth and death. A memorial has also general information about the deceased (2), such as places where he/she worked/studied, and hobbies, similar to a user’s profile in other social networks. Information in (1) and (2) was considered by the designers as important cultural variables to mediate cross-cultural interactions. Those pieces of information are inserted by the user who created it, or by the honored whom the memorial pays homage to, in case he/she is still alive (this particular situation will be analyzed in the paper later). Besides, a memorial may contain various pieces of data about the deceased, such as his/her timeline, his/her relationships, photos, videos, among others, listed from (4) to (10).

Fig. 4.
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The “Memorial” interface

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In accordance with the aforementioned recommendations, the element “identity” plays an essential role in distinguishing digital memorials from ordinary users. In our prototype, all digital memorials have the symbol of a cross (3) in the lower right corner of the profile photo, which tells them apart from ordinary users. Notice that the option of a cross as a symbol is more frequently used to express death in many Christian religions [17]. However, in a more detailed prototype where “Religion” could be considered as a cultural variable, other symbols should be offered as customized options to express death.

The features (5), (7) and (8) should also be implemented in the memorial to ensure the social network element “reputation”, as detailed in the previous section. The “timeline” (5) should show great events in the deceased user’s life, while “pictures” (7) and “videos” (8) would be areas where multimedia files could be found in the memorial. To implement the social network element “groups”, there must be a space where users connected to the memorial can interact among themselves; in our prototype, we called this area a “circle of grief” (9). Refined prototyped versions should include permission and privacy administration functionalities in this area.

The implementation of a tool to send private messages to the memorial is also desirable, because, as seen in the recommendations section, users may want to send private messages to memorials, in a one-way chat (10). Elements (4) and (6) of this interface will be discussed in the analysis of the next prototype, since they can be found in both interfaces.

The next prototype to be created was the “wall” (Fig. 5), a space where users can write public tributes to the memorial, or publish photos, videos and links on it. This interface consists of the site where users can add their tributes (1) and the space where they can view the interactions performed by other users (2). The wall can be interpreted as a tool where users can increase the reputation of the memorial, by sharing stories, memories, or multimedia files. Refined prototyped versions could consider if the administrator should also moderate the wall content. In addition to that, this prototype follows the practical recommendations “Digital memorials must have a wall” and “Allow the sharing of tributes in the social network or in other networks”. We can see in (3) and (4) the sharing options in the digital memorials network and in other networks.

Fig. 5.
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The “Wall” interface

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The prototype in Fig. 6 shows an interface for the relationships of a digital memorial: family relationships (1), and the “friends of the memorial” (2), i.e. people who added that memorial to their own list of memorials. This interface follows the recommendations proposed for the design of the element “relationship” in social networks of this type, including a genealogical tree for the deceased user’s family. In this tree, the dead should also be identified with a “cross” and, in case they were also users of this social network, they should be linked to the tree. It is important to remember that the administrator of a memorial inserts data about some relatives in the tree, but the system can also suggest other relatives based on the connections between users’ profiles. The relatives can also be displayed in a list, as in (3).

Fig. 6.
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The “Relationships” interface

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Another part of the recommendations, not prototyped yet, has to do with the system settings. The first interface related to them is the configuration of the visual display of the software. This interface shows the pre-defined options for customization of the system (1); personal customization of background images and color palette (2); and changes in the symbols for messages and system status (3). While sections (1) and (2) ensure that the system interfaces can be customized, section (3) allows users to customize the interface with icons of their creeds, so as to promote awareness of the cultural diversity of the death-related domain.

As to the system settings for the management of the fate of the account, the interface should show the memorials the user has the right to manage (1), the heirs to the user registered in the system (2) and the time during which the user can stay out of the system, until the ownership and rights over his/her account are transferred to another person (3).

The interface for the administration of the fate of the account should ensure that the memorials managed by a user do not become inaccessible after his/her death. The same applies to the user’s own profile, which can be transformed into a digital memorial (if the user wants to). After stating his/her wish for having his/her profile changed into a memorial after death, the user must insert the information that will be available in the future memorial.

In future steps of the research, the prototypes presented above will be tested, in order to assess usability and communicability and verify whether such design is appropriate.

6 Final Considerations

Digital memorials provide users with new forms of mourning and honoring those who passed away. Digital memorial applications currently available on the web are still new, but they are an important step in the process of developing software for this domain, demonstrating that posthumous interactions and postmortem digital legacy are relevant issues to be discussed.

Regarding the management of posthumous data, one of the issues to be discussed is: what is the best way to transform a dead user’s profile into a digital memorial? The solution proposed in the aforementioned discussion of the interfaces is that the user should be able to decide, before his/her death, the destination of his/her data, according to his/her volition [21]. Then, this decision should be automated by the system. However, in this case it is necessary to define who the “new” administrator of this memorial would be.

Another important issue to be discussed is that current social networks have not been able to differentiate profiles of “dead” and “living” users yet. Digital memorials should somehow resemble physical cemeteries, with graves and tombstones identifying the dead and honors paid to them [33]. Maybe that is why digital memorial services are now beginning to be offered by funeral companies. Perhaps, that is also why their use still causes discomfort and is a taboo for many people [4, 19].

On the other hand, legal issues should greatly influence these solutions and some actions only make sense if proposed from a legal perspective. “Terms of use” and “privacy policies” of applications are usually intended to protect users’ data, but they must be carefully adapted in terms of cultural diversity and legal systems to meet users’ needs in this domain. Otherwise, terms of use and privacy policies are no more than mere formalities.

In the case of digital memorials created by users (rather than automatically created by the system after a user’s death), the information present in the memorial is entirely inserted by its administrator. It is not possible to verify if the information is true, so that digital memorials become hostages of a single source of data. A possible solution would be if the deceased user’s friends and family could make suggestions or changes in the data of the memorial, in a sort of collective administration. To provide transparency to this administration, the page should show information like: “Administered by [name1] [name2] … [nameN]”.

Moreover, how could such applications work with specific “groups” of users and not only with individual profiles? For example, how could we have a specific “submemorial” for each deceased person within a collective memorial (common for people who died in wars and in natural catastrophes)?

Other tools could be created for that kind of application, such as a map in the memorial indicating where the deceased user had resided, worked, studied or been buried. In the field of digital memorials, various applications can be created, meeting users’ expectations to repute the image of the deceased and undergo digital mourning.

In this research, we have only studied some ideal characteristics for digital memorials, especially aiming at practical issues in the design of these applications. However, many social networks [37] allow users to change profiles into memorials. These solutions are limited, but interesting, as discussed by Campos et al. [13].

Investigating how to deal with death and designing multidisciplinary solutions to digital legacy systems in the light of technical, cultural, legal, ethical, and affective principles is comprehensive and challenging. According to Maciel and Pereira [19] highlight some challenging research questions for this area that will enable us to draw up guidelines to conceive systems that consider the fate of digital legacy embedded in software and to inform normative institutions on the discussion of those issues. Finally, this is also an opportunity for the software industry to obtain important inputs to develop systems that deal with the mortality of human beings.