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Black box, a concept design: grief work and the digitized self

Published: 29 September 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Death is the end of us all. Yet, the identity of the dead lives on in the possessions they leave behind. Traditionally, it is the responsibility of the bereaved to sort through the deceased's belongings. This responsibility has been complicated by the digital age, leaving the remains of our digital self on social media, our devices, and more. To probe cultural narratives of grief work and letting go, we have designed a conceptual artifact called Black Box.

References

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All Things Considered. 2011. Technology Brings Digital Memories To Grave Sites. (May 2011). Retrieved March 25, 2018 from https://www.npr.org/2011/05/30/136676964/technology-brings-digital-memories-to-grave-sites
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Liam J. Bannon. 2006. Forgetting as a feature, not a bug: the duality of memory and implications for ubiquitous computing. CoDesign 2, 1 (Feb. 2006), 3--15.
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Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. 2002. The placebo project. Proceedings of the 4th conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques. ACM, (Jun. 2002), 9--12.
[4]
Michael Massimi and Ronald M. Baecker. 2010. A death in the family: opportunities for designing technologies for the bereaved. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems. ACM, (April 2010), 1821--1830.
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William Odom, Richard Banks, David Kirk, Richard Harper, Siân Lindley, and Abigail Sellen. 2012. Technology heirlooms?: considerations for passing down and inheriting digital materials. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in computing systems. ACM, (May 2012), 337--346.
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William Odom, Richard Harper, Abigail Sellen, David Kirk, and Richard Banks. 2010. Passing on & putting to rest: understanding bereavement in the context of interactive technologies. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems. ACM, (April 2010), 1831--1840.
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Quiring. 2018. Living Headstones. Retrieved February 28, 2018 from https://www.monuments.com/living-headstones
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Evan Selinger. 2018. Can Bots Help Us Deal with Grief? (March 2018). Retrieved March 19, 2018 from https://medium.com/s/when-robots-rule-the-world/can-bots-help-us-deal-with-grief-3de488cae96
[9]
Phoebe Sengers, Kirsten Boehner, Shay David, and Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye. 2005. Reflective design. Proceedings of the 4th decennial conference on Critical computing: between sense and sensibility. ACM, (Aug. 2005), 49--58.
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TRT World. 2017. Digital Headstones: Grave headstones engage digitally with mourners. Video. Retrieved March 25, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KE2WAj5t0LA
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J. William Worden. 2008. Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy (4thed.). Springer, New York, NY, USA.

Cited By

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  • (2024)Materialising affective experiences: Designing for personal domestic grief practicesProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660753(685-698)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)New Understandings of Loss: Examining the Role of Reflective Technology Within Bereavement and Meaning-MakingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641968(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Dying, Death, and the Afterlife in Human-Computer Interaction. A Scoping Review.Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581199(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
NordiCHI '18: Proceedings of the 10th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
September 2018
1002 pages
ISBN:9781450364379
DOI:10.1145/3240167
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 29 September 2018

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Author Tags

  1. bereaved
  2. conceptual design
  3. critical design
  4. death
  5. grief work
  6. reflective design

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  • Extended-abstract

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NordiCHI'18
NordiCHI'18: Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
September 29 - October 3, 2018
Oslo, Norway

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NordiCHI '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 59 of 240 submissions, 25%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 379 of 1,572 submissions, 24%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Materialising affective experiences: Designing for personal domestic grief practicesProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3660753(685-698)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
  • (2024)New Understandings of Loss: Examining the Role of Reflective Technology Within Bereavement and Meaning-MakingProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641968(1-15)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2023)Dying, Death, and the Afterlife in Human-Computer Interaction. A Scoping Review.Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581199(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
  • (2022)Exploring Bodily Heirlooms: Material Ways to Prolong Closeness Beyond DeathProceedings of the 14th Conference on Creativity and Cognition10.1145/3527927.3532788(135-145)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2022

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