Designing for Domestic Memorialization andRemembrance: A Field Study of Fenestra in Japan
Daisuke Uriu
Keio University
Graduate School of Media Design
Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japanuriu@kmd.keio.ac.jp
ABSTRACTWe describe the design, implementation, and deployment ofFenestra, a domestic technology embodied in the form of awirelessly connected round mirror, photo frame, and candle
that displays photos of departed loved ones. Fenestra’s
interaction design, form, and materials are inspired by
Japanese domestic practices of memorializing departed
loved ones with a home altar called butsudan. We deployedFenestra in three Japanese households to explore how thisdesign artifact might support everyday domestic practicesof memorialization, and where complications might
potentially emerge. Findings reveal that a range ofoutcomes emerged across our participants’ experiences ofliving with Fenestra—from profound remembrance tounexpected uses to unsettling encounters. These findings
are interpreted to present opportunities for future researchand practice initiatives in the HCI community.
Author Keywords

Domestic Memorialization; Thanatosensitive
Techno-Spirituality; Research through Design.

Design;ACM Classification Keywords

H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI):
Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION

While it can be a delicate and complex research area,
technological trends are compelling the HCI community toengage with issues related to bereavement andmemorialization. Recent work has begun to explore issues
such as the appropriate transfer of the departed’s digital
data [e.g., 4,39] to how technology could better support
grieving processes among various stakeholders [e.g.,
33,34,35,41] to the ways in which digital content might beused in practices of memorialization [e.g., 23,28,37,38]. In
this paper, we focus on expanding design-oriented research
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858069

William Odom
Simon Fraser University
School of Interactive Arts + Technology
Surrey, British Columbia, Canada
wodom@sfu.ca
in this latter theme: how digital materials can be embodied
in interactive systems to open up new ways of supporting
everyday practices of memorialization in the home.

Figure 1. Emi-H1 integrated a quilt made by her grandmother andother objects in this Fenestra installation displayed in her livingroom. Emi’s reflection in the round mirror is subtly present in the
backdrop of her grandmother’s cropped image.

While people worldwide are amassing diverse kinds ofdigital possessions [44], this paper focuses specifically on
digital photos—one of the most enduring and expansive
contemporary forms of personal content. We wanted toinvestigate how new forms of interaction might enable
meaningful experiences with photos in the context ofeveryday domestic experiences of memorialization. We
also wanted to explore any unintended yet possible tensions
that might result from creating new technologies in thisnascent and sensitive design space.
Importantly, we situate our design work and field study inthe greater Tokyo, Japan area. There is growing interest in
the HCI community in understanding how interactive
systems are intersecting with social, cultural, and spiritual
practices concerning remembrance of one’s ancestors [e.g.,2]. However, the majority of HCI research on bereavement
and memorialization has emphasized on Western contexts.
More generally, few examples exist of HCI research thathas progressed beyond investigations of current practice toexplore how people’s everyday practices of memorializing
the lives of departed loved ones could be supported throughthe design of new interactive systems.
With this in mind, we designed Fenestra—an interactive
system embodied in the form of a wirelessly connectedround mirror display, photo frame display, and candle (seefigure 1). Fenestra’s design draws inspiration frombutsudan—the Japanese Buddhist home altar that is ahighly significant site for practices of memorializing
departed loved ones. Lighting a candle in the candleholder
activates the main interactive feature of Fenestra;
indeterminate changes in the brightness and movement of
its flame control how photos of the departed are surfaced,
cycled through, and remain present on the photo frame andmirror displays. A secondary feature is triggered when theuser gazes directly at the round mirror, which causes
cropped digital portraits of the deceased to be displayed.
We deployed Fenestra in the homes of three participantsthat each represented different life stages, but had
experienced the loss of a family member in recent years.
Findings revealed that participants drew on Fenestra as aresource for their everyday memorialization practices invalued and, at times, unexpected ways. They also reveal theneed for new strategies to better support people’s evolving
self-determined practices of living with digital materials
evoking the lives of departed loved ones. Our study also led
to unanticipated encounters for household members, which
revealed several critical issues bound to conducting
research in this nascent and growing design space.
This paper makes two contributions. First, it offers a rareexample of a research-through-design study situated within
the non-western context of contemporary Japanesememorialization practices in the home. Second, it offers
several considerations aimed at sensitizing the design space
toward better supporting the work of living and engaging
with digital materials evoking people’s departed loved ones.
BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK

There exists extensive literature from many perspectives
within the social sciences that explore how people deal withdeath. While these works are expansive, memorialization—
the intentional act of preserving the memory of a person or
event—has gained significant attention. A central thread in
this work explores how social and cultural values shapememorialization practices on individual and societal levels[e.g., 10,26]. Scholars have also turned their attention
towards the materiality of memorials and the various roles
they play in the lives of the bereaved over time [20].
Researchers have described how memorials can beleveraged as resources for the bereaved to move on fromthe death of a loved one [3], while others have documented
how they can help maintain connections to departed
ancestors [32,60]. Practices for memorializing the lives ofdeparted loved ones have existed for hundreds of years inJapan [e.g., 29,50,57]. The widespread adoption of thesepractices is tied to traditional Buddhist rituals, where theJapanese Buddhist altar, the butsudan, plays a central role.
Traditionally, each Japanese family would possess one altar.
This family altar was handed down across generations
through a patriarchal structure, from the eldest son to next
oldest male within the family [1].
However, perspectives on traditional Buddhist home altar
practices have been changing due to several reasons [51,58].

First, it is more common for family members to live long
distances away from each other, often to pursue
professional careers. Second, contemporary home life inurban settings, such as Tokyo, unfolds within small
apartments, which are difficult to accommodate large
traditional altars. Third, the patriarchal structure of
traditional altar practices largely restricted women fromliving with their family’s altar [1]. Hence, now smaller
altars with modern aesthetics are beginning to emerge in theJapanese marketplace. Recent research has also indicated atrend toward memorializing departed loved ones withframed deceased’s photos instead of traditional butsudans
in Japanese households [51]. The proliferation of digitalcontent presents an opportunity for rich new materials to
support home memorialization practices in ways that could
be more extensible and easier to mobilize than physicalmaterials. Yet, little is known about how people would
react to a digital materials and interactive technology
augmenting home altar practices, and what the potential
benefits and tensions might be.
Within the HCI community, there has been growing interestin how interactive technology is intersecting withexperiences of bereavement. Massimi and others arguethanatosensitive design—design that engages with themany issues bound to mortality, dying, and death throughthe creation of interactive systems—is a critical emerging
area for HCI research and practice [34]. A range of recent
works has since explored issues, such as the transfer ofdigitalpossessions
belongingtothedeparted[4,18,19,35,39] support for emotional grief [5,33], and evenpotential issues for researchers operating in the spacethemselves [40].
A handful of works in HCI have begun to consider how
digital technology is intersecting with memorialization
efforts. Foong and Kera [11] adopt a reflective design lensto interpreting experiences of digital memorials. Uriu et al.
[54] propose a digital family shrine concept for people toremember deceased relatives. Following this work, Uriu &Okude [53] describe a speculative interactive altar forsupporting ritual prayer with one’s ancestors. Drawing onthese examples and many others, Moncur and Kirk [38]offer a framework for designing digital memorials. They
articulate the need for future research to explore howinteractive systems shape practices related to the post-self—
how the identity of the departed is socially constructed.
In parallel to these works, there has been an ongoinginterest in the HCI community on how interactive
technology and spiritual practices are becoming entangled.
Bell [2] and Wyche et al. [62] describe emerging technospiritual practices and the implications they suggest for
critically reframing the design of domestic technologies tobetter support extraordinary experiences in everyday life.
With the exception of the Prayer Companion [13] and Sun
Dial [61], few other research-through-design projects haveemerged in the HCI community since Bell and Wyche etal.’s seminal work [see 6]. More generally, the increasing
prevalence of personal digital content, such as digital
photos [e.g., 28,43,45], video [e.g., 47], audio [e.g., 46],and social media [7], has led to a stream of work in HCI
exploring how experiences of reflection and reminiscencemight be better supported.
Collectively, these strands of research have made important
contributions to understanding how interactive technology
is intersecting with experiences of memorialization. They
also call attention to how complex and culturally situatedthis design space is and the need to better understandpossible opportunities and tensions existing in it. Our work
attempts to bring these strands together. We want to explore
how interactive technologies could be designed to leverage
pre-existing cultural rituals tied to contemporary domestic
memorialization practices in Japan. We also want tounderstand how technology mediates people’s experiencesof living with digital representations of their departed loved
ones. Beyond work that has gone before, we do this bygrounding discussion around the design and deployment of
the Fenestra system in three Japanese households.

recorded three different households, asking them to walk us
through their practices of memorializing departed loved
ones with and without utilizing traditional butsudans.
When visiting public temples, we took photographs andfield notes to document emerging insights.
We intended the design of Fenestra to reference some key
elements emerging in our observations. Circle and squareshaped windows were common across Buddhist temples wevisited (see Right of Figure 2). Indeed, the name Fenestra isa reference to the Latin word for window. In Zen Buddhism,
the circle symbolizes the afterlife paradise, whereas thesquare represents the lower (i.e. living) world. Candles also
populated altars and temples, and are used in many different
kinds of Buddhist ceremonies including funerals andmemorial services. Here, candlelight symbolizes thejourney of the departed’s spirit to the afterlife.

METHODOLOGY

We designed Fenestra with the goal of exploring how
embodying digital photos within a domestic technology
could support everyday memorialization practices in Japan.
The design of Fenestra’s interaction and aesthetics draws
inspiration from Japanese Buddhist home altars, andsymbolic forms commonly found in Japanese Buddhist
temples. We intended to craft an interaction design artifactthat could provoke reflection on the system itself andencourage a dialogue about (and beyond) the potential
future it embodies. Our methodology drew on several
related approaches including reflective design [48],technology probes [24], and research through design [63].
Design Process and Rationale

In an earlier speculative design project, Uriu and Okude[53] developed an interactive installation called
ThanatoFenestra (see Figure 2) that explored a potential
future where bereaved family members could remember
their ancestors by experiencing photographs projected ontoa circular canvas. The installation used stock images andwas far too fragile and cumbersome to viably deploy in aperson’s home. Yet the form and experience appearedcompelling. In the Fenestra project, we wanted to develop arobust system that could more easily fit within people’s
everyday domestic settings.
The process leading to the development of Fenestra
consisted of the following. We reviewed theoretical
literature and empirical studies (a sample of which are
noted in the prior section). We also conducted in-person
observations of in-home practices for memorialization as
well as several different traditional Japanese Zen Buddhist
temples to help orient our design sensibility toward theforms, materials, and practices characterizing these sites.
During our in-home visits, we interviewed and video-

Figure 2. Left: Prototype of ThanatoFenestra [53], Right: Genkoan temple (Kyoto-city, Japan) we visited during our design
process; the circular window is symbolic of the afterlife; thesquare-shape entrance is a gate to the living world.

Fenestra consists of three artifacts—a mirror, photo frame,and candleholder. These artifacts are designed as a visual
family, each handcrafted from teakwood. All technicalcomponents are embedded within the wooden cases. Thesedesign choices were motivated in part by our desire to craft
artifacts whose materials could inspire a sense of perceived
durability [42] often associated with domestic altars.
Fenestra artifacts, implementation, and interaction design

The Round Mirror is comprised of a custom cut circularpiece of one-way mirror glass, which has an LCD display
embedded behind it. An Arduino Fio paired with an Xbee
module and an IR distance sensor are embedded in the frontof the mirror stand; the IR sensor will detect obstruction
within 300 mm from the mirror (e.g., if a person is directlyin front of the mirror and not moving). We gave the mirror
a circular form as a subtle cultural reference to the afterlife
in Zen Buddhism. We used mirror glass to potentiallyevoke contemplation on the connection between theowner’s life and their ancestors (e.g., through seeing thesubtle reflection of one’s own face while gazing at imagesof departed loved ones).
The Photo Frame consists of a tablet computer embedded
in a wooden case; a Xbee Explorer module is housed in thebase of the photo frame and connected to the tablet via USB.
The module wirelessly receives signals from thecandleholder and mirror. Swiping the photo frame
touchscreen enables people to cycle through photos if
desired. We gave the Photo Frame a quadrilateral, square-Figure 3. From left to right: (A) current photos can be viewed on the photo frame through simple swipe interactions (no image appears on
the round mirror); (B) changes in the candle flame’s brightness and movement unpredictably triggers how old photos (on the photo frame)
and face photos (on the round mirror) surface and are cycled through; (C) if the IR sensor is obstructed by a person or object (in this casethe candleholder) a face photo will appear on the round mirror, even if current photos are being display (such as in this case).

like form as a subtle symbolic reference to the type ofdigital content it presents—mostly images of people still
existing in the ‘lower’, living world.
The Candleholder components include an Arduino Pro
Mini paired with a Xbee module, two light (CdS) sensors,
an infrared temperature sensor, a thermistor temperature
sensor, and a lithium-ion battery; all are embedded within ahandcrafted spherical candleholder. The candleholder isintended to hold a lit candle. The light sensors detectvariations in the candle flame movement and brightness.
The infrared sensor detects the temperature of candle flame,
and the thermistor detects the temperature inside of thecandleholder. The candleholder sits on top of a custom
designed teak cradle with a micro USB connection forcharging the lithium battery. While a candle is lit, allsensors continuously send data to the Photo Frame. This
choice enabled the candle to be moved elsewhere in thehome; this aimed to offer more flexibility for people toadapt Fenestra artifacts to their own practices and domestic
spaces. We decided on using a candle as the primary ‘input’
sensed by the system for two main reasons: (i) it provided
an opportunity to leverage a pre-existing cultural ritual tied
to Japanese Buddhist memorialization practices and (ii) theephemeral, wavering quality of the candlelight offered apoetic way to unpredictably surface digital content, while
not requiring direct further interaction by the user(s).
Before installing Fenestra, we asked participants toassemble an archive of photos to include in the system. We
also created high-resolution scanned images of any physicalphotographs they wanted to include in the system. Whileparticipants knew that Fenestra was related to home altar
practices, no specific criteria were given to about the kindsof photos they should select. We did make participants
aware that they could include photos that they may moregenerally want to display in the home if desired. We wanted
to explore how a mix of digital content related to departed
ancestors and one’s own everyday life might shapeperceptions of Fenestra as a domestic technology.
Based on the images participants provided, three main typesof photos were displayed through Fenestra: Current, Old,and Face. Current is the most general category and often
consisted of images of living family or friends. They could

only be viewed on the Photo Frame when the candle was
not lit (see Figure 3A).
Old photos consisted of (often scanned) images taken when
the departed was still alive. We developed a script togenerate cropped, circular portrait-like images of thedeparted in all instances in which she or he appeared. These
Face photos would simultaneously appear on the Round
Mirror when the corresponding Old photo was displayed on
the Photo Frame. The cropped Face photos reference to theiei—a photo typically created by a third party Japanese
funeral company. The iei photo is always edited to depict a
portrait of the departed against a neutral background; alarge print of it is then made, framed, and shown at the
departed’s Japanese memorial ceremony. Since the iei
photo is closely tied to formal ceremonies, we chose to notedit out the backgrounds of the Face photos to emphasize
the everyday nature of Fenestra as a domestic technology.
The mirror image in Figure 3B and C is an example of this
cropped iei inspired Face photo.
When a candle is lit in the candleholder, the systemtransitions to showing Old Photos on the Photo Frame andFace photos of the Round Mirror (see Figure 3B).
Additional parings of Old/Face photos are surfaced
depending changes in the candlelight’s brightness andmovement. If the candlelight shimmered from a slightbreeze, a similar shimmering visual effect manifests in the
Old/Face Photo pairing. If the flame wavers more strongly,
Fenestra cycles through Old/Face images in a motion
closely tied to the flame’s movement. As the candle dims
over time, the photos do too. When the candle goes out, allscreens are dimmed and remain off to signify the end of theritual (however, at any point after this, the owner could
touch the Photo Frame to begin viewing Current Photos).
Face photos can also appear on the Round Mirror when the
IR sensor is obstructed (see Figure 3C). This triggers a Facephoto to randomly surface through the mirror, although theowner’s reflection in the mirror is still slightly visible.
When the sensor is no longer obstructed the Face photo will
disappear. In addition to gazing into the mirror, a person
can trigger a Face photo by placing an object (or offering)
directly in front of the mirror.

Participants, Data Collection, and Analysis

We recruited three primary participants from three different
households from the Tokyo area to participate in our study.
This approach clearly has limitations; for example, it makes
the results hard to generalize to a wide population of users.
Similar to the seminal technology probes paper [24], andseveral field studies since then [e.g., 14,22,43,52], we
wanted to initially focus on a small selection of participants
to gain a richer descriptive understanding of the space as awhole to inform what might be salient issues for future
research and practice. Considering the sensitive nature of
our study, flyers and advertisements did not prove effective
for recruitment. By spreading information via word-ofmouth through a snowball sampling approach—beginningby asking many people we knew that exhibited various ages
and occupations, and then asking them to pass along
information about our study to their social contacts—wewere recruited three participants; each represented very
different life stages and domestic settings. We recruited thisparticipant pool as it could offer a diverse range ofexperiences with home memorialization practices. We use
pseudonyms to describe household members in this paper.
Our primary participant in household 1 (H1) is Emi, awoman in her mid-20s whom had lost her grandmother
Yoshiko six months prior to the study. Emi lives alone in
her apartment, often working at home as director of her
design company. Her grandfather Joji lives a short walkaway from her apartment and owns a Buddhist altar in his
home. Emi uploaded 15 current, 29 old, 22 face photos.
Satoko was the primary participant in household 2 (H2);
she was in her late-80s and lost her husband Kenta eight
years ago. She had recently transitioned to living in aneldercare home, where she shared a room with three otherelder women. Her daughter Masako and her granddaughter
Chisa visited her frequently, as did care workers. She had a
Buddhist altar with many material possessions owning to
her departed husband at her home, but could no longer see
them. Satoko uploaded 17 current, 14 old, and 14 facephotos. Satoko passed away approximately one year after
the conclusion of our field study.
Rikako, a woman in her late-50s, was the primaryparticipant in household 3 (H3). She had lost her motherToshiko six years ago and her father Shun two years prior.
She lives with her husband Gen and second son Tsuyoshi;
her first son Taku lives in an apartment nearby and visitsfrequently. Rikako purchased a Buddhist altar when
Toshiko died; she has it featured centrally in her livingroom with two small framed photos of departed her parents.
She uploaded 9 current, 22 old, and 34 face photos.
We deployed Fenestra in each household for one week. It is
important to note that considerable discussion among ourdesign research team shaped this field study deployment
period. Recent research has indicated that even under‘normal’ circumstances of the death of a loved one,
individuals can experience complicated grief disorder(CGD), which can prolong experiences of grief, causing
imbalances in autobiographical and biographical memory[17]. CGD and related disorders (e.g., prolonged grief anddepression) have been shown to be prevalent within theJapanese population [8,25]. While American Psychological
Association (APA) metrics for questionnaires [e.g., 49] doexist to help screen participants for CGD, nearly allfindings from prior studies that inform this approach arederived from Western cultures; their effectiveness within
non-western cultures is not fully established [25].
Considering how little is known about the design space weare investigating—especially within a non-western context
like Japan—we had to proceed cautiously. Fenestra could
trigger unpredictable emotional reactions and we went togreat lengths to make participants aware of the possible
effects that could come from participating in our study. We
decided on the one-week period as it presented enough timeto understand participants’ everyday experiences, while notputting them at potential long-term risk of unanticipatedeffects. This duration does suggest limitations in terms of a
possible novelty effect shaping participants’ perceptions ofFenestra. We were careful to be mindful of this throughout
the development of our interview protocol, data analysis,
and interpretation of the study findings.
We aimed to collect rich, descriptive accounts fromparticipants through semi-structured interviews. This
included an introductory interview when installing Fenestra
and a final interview at the end of the deployment. During
our initial home visit (which lasted 3-4 hours) we aimed tounderstandmembers’
everydaylives,
personal
memorialization practices, perceptions of digital or physicalmaterials belonging to the departed, and generaltechnology-usage. Our primary participants gave us a tourof their living spaces and decided where Fenestra should beinstalled. We also provided participants with candles,
matches, a trash bin, and an iPad. Participants could use theiPad if they wanted to take pictures, videos, or voicerecordings capturing their experiences with Fenestra (butthis was not a requirement). We gave an introduction to
how Fenestra works and provided a instructional pamphlet.
We did not explicitly encourage participants to interact with
the Fenestra and all were aware they could drop out of thestudy at any time. At the conclusion of each study, we
conducted a final interview to understand participants’experiences with Fenestra. Questions were designed to
explore topics such as: initial impressions and shifting
perceptions; potential unanticipated experiences; howothers reacted to Fenestra. We also reviewed theexperiences participants may have captured on the iPad.
All interview sessions were audio recorded. All recordings
were transcribed first in Japanese; then, relevant segments(as opposed to idle chitchat) were translated into English.
Researchers took field notes and documentary photographs
during each interview session. Field notes were reviewed
following each interview, and tentative insights were noted
in reflective field memos [16]. We held ongoing meetings

to discuss emergent findings. Analysis of the data was an
ongoing process. After each home visit, we conductedpreliminary analysis, searching for emergent patterns acrossrecordings, field notes, and photos to draw out underlying
themes [36]. We coded raw data documents with these
themes. We also created affinity diagrams to model
connections and differences among households.
FINDINGSInterviews, observations, and participants’ diary reflections
revealed that Fenestra was frequently used across all three
primary participants. The references to Buddhist homealtars and the ease with which other cherished objects could
be integrated with Fenestra helped evoke a sense offamiliarity around its place in everyday life. However,
several differences surfaced in how household members
adopted Fenestra. Extraordinary and unnerving encountersemerged in some cases as participants struggled to interpret
unexpected behaviors exhibited by the system. In thefollowing sections, we present examples taken from acrossour field study that help to capture these themes.

digital artifacts associated with her grandmother’s life in a
way that was intimately situated to her home.
Emi-H1 also reported that she was able to easily engage inpractices with Fenestra and highlighted the significance ofthe candle as a control mechanism for the system. She lit
the candle every night and sometimes in the morning.
During these times, her attention oscillated between thephoto frame, mirror, and the candle flame itself when asubtle visual flickering effect manifested on the photos. She
described an emergent practice of exhaling a deep breathe
onto the candle to trigger it to cycle to a different
juxtaposition of photos on the mirror and frame. When
reflecting on her experience, Emi-H1 emphasized how thissubtle kind interaction paired with not having direct control
over the specific photos manifested through Fenestra
enabled her to better concentrate on contemplating her
grandmother’s life.

Pre-existing rituals and emergent practices

Interviews with participants revealed a range of ways thatFenestra was drawn on as a resource for supporting thememorialization and remembrance of departed loved ones.
Yet each household represented different life stages,
domestic configurations, and orientations toward Buddhist
home altar practices. Next, we detail how Fenestra became
uniquely situated within our primary participants’ lives andpractices, and perceptions that emerged.
While Emi-H1 had a few possessions that she used toremember her departed grandmother Yoshiko’s life, she did
not have a butsudan in her small apartment. She noted thather grandfather Joji-H1 had purchased a traditional
butsudan following the death of his wife, but felt inclined tofollow traditional Japanese Buddhist practices and not
integrate any materials belonging to her life into the altar.
Emi-H1 described growing dissatisfaction over this choice:“It’s all about praying for butsudan itself and not muchabout grandmother [Yoshiko].” This issue produced an
ongoing unresolved tension for her. She expresseddisinterest in traditional Japanese Buddhist practice and areluctance to visit her grandfather’s home altar.
Emi-H1 situated Fenestra on a table in her living room nearwhere she spends most her time working from home. Soon
after the initial installation, she integrated a quilt her
grandmother had made under the photo frame, along with asmall plant that symbolized Yoshiko’s love of nature (seeFigure 1). Emi-H1 later noted that these decisions werehighly meaningful in enabling Fenestra to find its place
within her home by bringing the few material possessions
belonging to her grandmother into an ensemble with themore expansive digital materials embodied in Fenestra. In
this way, the openness of Fenestra’s design enabled EmiH1 to create a unique assembly of material traces andFigure 4. Emi-H1 favored contemplating juxtapostitions ofimages on the mirror and photoframe that depicted intimate, oneto-one social relationships that shaped the life of her grandmother.

As Emi-H1’s experiences accumulated, she describedbecoming particularly drawn to instances in which images
highlighting one-to-one social bonds appeared: “I lovephotos showing only me and grandma (e.g. Figure 4), whichis the best combination for me. … I [also] love the photo of
my grandparents Yoshiko and Joji that my father took
during his childhood.” Emi noted that the combination of
the photo frame image depicting a deeply meaningful oneto-one social bond, paired with viewing the photo of her
grandmother’s faced slightly imposed over the reflection ofher own face produced a meaningful space forremembrance and reflection. Interestingly, Emi-H1 statedthat other old images depicting her grandmother in larger
groups of people often did not produce the same result. For
her, they drew emphasis away from honoring the intimacy
bound to social relationships between her grandmother,other specific people, and her desire to contemplate howthese bonds shaped her own life. She desired to have acurated set of photos that reflected these kinds of instances.
Similar to Emi-H1, Satoko-H2 did not currently inhabit adwelling with a butsudan. She had purchased one after her
husband Kenta’s death six years ago and frequently drew
on it as a resource for memorializing his life, but had been
separated from it since moving to the care facility. MasakoH2 and Chisa-H2 helped Satoko-H2 set up Fenestra on ashelf next to her bed (see Figure 5). Fenestra’s simple
tangible interaction design enabled Satoko-H2 to fluidly

adopt it into an everyday practice. She contrasted Fenestra’s
use of familiar input mechanisms (i.e. a candle) and her
comfortable relation to it with other contemporary digitaltechnologies, which she perceived as designed for younger
generations and had largely avoided. Satoko describedengaging with Fenestra several times each day frommorning until evening. She habitually cared for the system
by covering the photo frame with a special cover each night.
Satoko also ritualistically closed the curtain to the outside
facing window each night as a way of symbolically bidding
her departed husband farewell before going to bed: “I could
meet Kenta everyday, but have to say ‘Good bye’ when I
sleep at night. Please close this curtain now. He [Kenta]
does not appear when it is too bright!”

Figure 5. Fenestra near Satoko-H2’s bed where it was habituallycared for and sometimes triggered extraordinary experiences.

When we probed further on this statement, it became clearthat the subtle changes in light produced when Satoko
closed the curtain could sometimes trigger the IR sensor in
the round mirror to momentarily display an image of her
deceased husband. Interestingly, when this accidental
sensing occurred Satoko reported always perceiving it as an
extraordinary serendipitous encounter. She interpreted these
instances as good omens—“like he’s watching over me”—
making her feel calm before going to bed. Further, Satoko
enthusiastically noted “Kenta sometimes appeared even at
midnight” and described seeing a momentary image of him
a handful of times when she had briefly awoken during thenight. This kind of unexpected accidental sensing resulted
in positive serendipitous experiences for Satoko andcatalyzed a meaningful nightly ritual. However, as we
describe later, other instances of accidental sensing did notalways produce such positively perceived effects.
Rikako-H3 possessed a very large, immobile butsudan inher home, which she purchased six years ago after the deathof her mother (her father had since passed away). Among
our participants, Rikako-H3 most strictly adhered to norms
surrounding Buddhist altar practices. She displayed formal,
framed iei pictures of each of her deceased parents in the
butsudan, where she frequently lit candles and incense
sticks, and placed food offerings for the departed loved
ones (a ceremonial Buddhist practice).
Throughout the field study, several instances emerged that
illustrated how Rikako-H3 developed a different, yetsignificant relation to Fenestra compared to her traditional
butsudan. Rikako-H3 situated Fenestra as a fixture in her
living room, making it available for casual encounters anddirect, purposed engagements. She contrasted this decision
with the location of her butsudan in a small nearby roomthat was only used for altar rituals. Rikako-H3 also viewed
Fenestra as an opportunity to integrate cherished material
possessions within a domestic display honoring her parents,
which she perceived were not appropriate for her traditional
butsudan. She recognized the references to Buddhist forms
embodied in the Fenestra, which prompted her to artfully
situate preserved flowers from her mother’s memorialservice between the photo frame and the mirror as a symbolof her journey from the lower-world to the afterlife. She
also placed dolls alongside Fenestra that she had acquired
when living in Spain with her parents and brought backmany memories from this time in her life (see Figure 6).
In Rikako-H3’s initial Fenestra deployment, we had
generated two different cropped images (one for eachdeparted parent) to appear on her round mirror. After using
Fenestra during the initial interview, she asked us to departfrom the reference to customary iei portrait photos (where
only one person can be featured). Since she perceived
Fenestra as existing outside of butsudan norms and believed
her parents would have wanted to be together, we wereasked to generate a new set of mirror images in which they
were collocated (one such image is visible in Figure 6).

Figure 6. Rikako’s practice of placing the candleholder in front of
the mirror to trigger a collocated image of her parents to ‘show’them a more recent photo frame image of her nephew’s wedding.

This subtle decision led to an emergent valued ritual.
Rikako-H3 described that when the photo frame displayed
her current photos, she would subtly orient the mirror
toward the frame and place the candleholder in front of it,
triggering a collocated cropped image of her parents toappear. She perceived this action as enabling her parents,
together, to view experiences in her life that she wishedthey could have attended. Rikako-H3 reflects on enacting
this practice when a photo of her nephew Sayaka’s recent
wedding reception appeared on the photo frame: “It’s a way
for them to celebrate the wedding. …I love the combination.
The faces [of my parents] on the mirror and the recent
photos on the photo frame. …It felt like it [Fenestra]provided an experience of living with the deceased in a waythat very different from [traditional] Buddhist altars.”

When reflecting further on this distinction, Rikako-H3
characterized Fenestra as having a lightweight quality that
could exist in her everyday life and easily shift between
being directly experienced and simply being lived with. She
contrasted this with the more involved process of dedicatedcontemplation and honoring of ancestors at her butsudan.
For Rikako-H3, Fenestra emerged as a resource for seeing
her departed parents, momentarily “greeting them”, perhaps
showing them a part of her life that they had missed, andthen letting them fade away into the background as themirror eclipsed their image. She reflected further:“gradually I began to feel the calm presence of my parents.
…When I woke up in the morning or came back home, thephotos are changing, which made me happy to take a few
moments to see them.”
Collectively, these reflections illustrate how on a generallevel Fenestra functioned as a valued resource forsupporting everyday memorialization practices in ourparticipants’ lives. They also reveal that the specific ways it
was drawn on varied considerably and, at times, in
unexpected ways as participants sought to adapt it to theirdomestic practices and values in unique self-determined
ways. In the next section we describe how Fenestra
intersected with our participants’ broader everyday
domestic environments as others also encountered it.
Broader intersections and effects in everyday life

While Fenestra was arranged for our three main participants,
unexpected experiences were triggered by its situation indomestic spaces. Next, we present examples that illustrate
how the everyday orientation of Fenestra produced both
positive outcomes and unsettling encounters.
Emergent social interactions triggered by Fenestra

All participants reported that the tangible nature of Fenestra
opened it up to being noticed and manipulated by otherpeople occupying their domestic environment. For example,
Rikako-H3’s son Taku initiated a practice of lighting acandle and bringing the candleholder to the dining table
when household 3 had dinner. The simple presence of thecandleholder itself during meals could stimulate
recollection and discussion of fond memories associatedwith Rikako’s departed parents. In some cases, family
members reported enjoying the anticipation that grewaround which photos might be displayed when they
returned to Fenestra with the candle. Yet, household 3
described equally appreciating that if their discussion
continued on and the candle faded out, so too would theimages on Fenestra. The photos flickered and disappeared
against the backdrop of domestic life just as the candlelight
had, instead of lingering on and demanding the attention offamily members.
In Satoko-H2’s case, the presence of Fenestra triggered aresurgence of social activity in her everyday life. Visiting
family members and care facility workers described aremarkable change in Satoko-H2’s desire to engage othersin conversations about her own life. Both Masako-H2 andChisa-H2 conveyed unresolved reservations about SatokoH2’s living for years separated from nearly all material
possessions reminiscent of her husband. They described
how the range of images embodied through Fenestra
prompted Satoko-H2 to tell rarely heard stories about thelife she shared with her husband. One example centered onwhen an image of Satoko-H2’s husband against the
backdrop of many tents surfaced (see Figure 7), Masako-H2
and Chisa-H2 learned about the meaning and significanceof the photograph they had never known, but were soongoing to inherit. Yet, it is unclear if this kind of behavior
would have continued in a longer study. This example does
illustrate how the extensibility of digital materials
embodied in Fenestra provided a resource for Sataoko-H2
to memorialize and remember her husband’s life in waysthat largely would have been impossible with material
possessions due to her living conditions.

Figure 7. Fenestra emerged as a ‘ticket to talk’ about the personaland historical significance of old photos depicting Satoko-H2’slife with Kenta that her family members had never heard.

Fenestra also provided a platform for family members fromdifferent generations to express their opinions on shifting
perspectives in Japan around the butsudan andmemorialization rituals. For example, Emi-H1’sgrandfather Joji-H1 visited her home while she was livingwith Fenestra. To her surprise, after lighting a candle andinteracting with Fenestra during his visit, he was highly
receptive to its presence within her home. While it was a
topic they seldom discussed, Joji-H1 opened up about histhoughts on the needs of the younger generation in Tokyo
today: “I don’t know what we should pray with [in my]butsudan to memorialize them. There is nothing there thatreally reminds us them. …Traditional rituals should be
updated for the contemporary needs that people have toremember their lost loved ones. …Japanese people don’t
have to use butsudan anymore. …[Fenestra] could be analternative. It could even be produced in Buddhist temples.
…We can all actually remember the deceased with it.”Unexpected re-animations of the departed through Fenestra

Despite the optimism voiced in Joji’s statement above,
several unsettling experiences also emerged whenparticipants struggled to interpret unexpected behaviors
exhibited by Fenestra. Nearly all of these cases centered on
instances in which the IR sensor was accidentally triggered,causing an image of a departed loved one to momentarily
manifest on the round mirror and then disappear. Emi-H1
reflects on how this effect could have a disruptive effect on
her everyday routine of working from home: “I had a kindof dark mood when seeing photos that sometimes appearedon the mirror when I was busy working in daytime. Ithought photos of the deceased should have been shown
only when I lit the candle. I love grandma and want toremember her, but not all of the time.” This example
illustrates how accidental sensing introduced digital content
into Emi’s domestic life at a time that was sociallyinappropriate. She also speculated that if her grandmother
had not passed away in such a peaceful way, this kind of
unrequested momentary manifestation could have serious
emotional consequences.
Family members in household 3 also reported occasionallyencountering temporary manifestations of a departed loved
one. As these experiences accumulated, household
members decided to unplug Fenestra at night when they go
to bed: “We decided to switch it off every night when we go
to sleep. It started when my son came back home late onenight and saw it [accidentally trigger]. He felt scared andturned it off” (Rikako-H3). Gen-H3 then noted: “And, when
I went to the rest room late at night I was scared. The
deceased’s face appeared!” These experiences promptedhousehold 3 to reflect on their own everyday domestic
practices and consider activities that, as Rikako-H3 noted,“wouldn’t want the deceased to see.” As a preemptive
practice, household 3 began unplugging Fenestra when they
watched television together in the living room. Similar to
Emi-H1, they wanted to avoid a momentary re-animation of
the departed disrupting the social order of the home (e.g.,during family leisure time). Comparable to both Emi-H1
and Rikako-H3’s accounts, a night manager at Satoko-H2’scare facility described the uneasy effects generated fromoccasionally encountering an unexpected flicker of herelderly client’s deceased husband in the middle of the night.
Collectively, these examples highlight unintended
consequences that emerged when images of the departed
unexpectedly manifested through Fenestra. While someparticipants developed workarounds, these undesired
intrusions complicated the social and moral expectations
that our participants had for a technology like Fenestra.
DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Our findings reveal various ways households desired to
draw on Fenestra. In several instances participants desired
to further situate Fenestra to their own unique, selfdetermined memorialization practices. Other cases
suggested how technology could better support a wider
range of experiences bound to domestic memorialization
beyond direct interaction. Our study also raises several
consequences that could emerge if critical consideration is
not given to new technological interventions. Next, we
present several research and design considerations for the
HCI community that emerged from our work.
Designing for momentary and lived-with experiences—
A core goal of our study was to explore how the design ofFenestra could leverage people’s pre-existing material
practices. We decided on using candlelight as a primarymaterial for interaction because it drew on a familiar
cultural practice with Japanese memorialization ceremonies.

We also felt that the candle flame could offer a poetic
quality to the experience of Fenestra. Similar to how it canbe challenging for people to connect with and imagine
death, candle flames too are complex. It can be difficult toanticipate how they will move and, like life, a candle flame
can quickly be blown out unexpectedly. Participantsreflected on how the input method of candlelight offered asimple, appropriate way to open up contemplative ritualswith Fenestra (e.g., Emi-H1’s practice of navigating photos
through slow, deep exhalations). Surprisingly, participants
did not report tensions in abdicating control over photoselection to changes to the unpredictable, indeterminate
nature of the candlelight. Rather, this design choice wasoften cited as helping participants to momentarily
concentrate on the lives of departed loved ones, growing
anticipation around the digital photos, and enabling
experiences with Fenestra fade to a close as the candlelightdimmed and went out.
While prior work has explored how qualities of randomness
and machine autonomy can productively open up
experiences of pause, reflection, and anticipation [e.g., 14,
22,30,31,43,59], nearly all research to date has manifested
these qualities of experience through hidden computational
processes. Our study contributes to this growing area of
HCI research by demonstrating the value and potential inleveraging easy to manipulate, ephemeral input [9,23,
53,55], which, in our case manifested a quality of
unpredictability that supported rich experiences and rituals
for memorializing the departed. There is an opportunity to
explore how additional kinds of highly sensorial,
momentary input (e.g., incense smoke, light from multiple
candles, etc.) could be combined with other forms of digitalcontent (e.g., audio, video, music) to artfully support
experiences of memorialization. Developing moremeaningful strategies for supporting the remembrance oflost loved ones through carefully crafted ways of reexperiencing digital content in everyday life marks a clear
space for future research in the HCI community.
We also found that participants created and re-configured
assemblies of material possessions with Fenestra. While
subtle, these actions enabled Fenestra to bring into relation
digital materials, physical things, domestic space, andhousehold members in ways that were unique, nuanced, andevolving. As these kinds of actions accumulated, Fenestra
emerged as a background technology—one that could
dynamically shift from the forefront of domestic experience,
to being passively encountered, to fading out of sightentirely. In this way, Fenestra offers an example of how
digital materials can be embodied with material qualities
that enable them to be situated in the familiar context ofartifact-mediated memorialization practices. These findings
build on and expand prior work articulating the need for
new design strategies that move beyond designing
explicitly for ‘use’ and emphasize the aesthetics ofintegrating cherished digital materials into environments inmore holistic ways over time [e.g., 15,21,43,48].

Supporting evolving personalization of digital materials
for domestic memorialization—Another goal of our study
was to explore how digital photos could provide ameaningful resource for domestic memorialization. The
spaceless quality of digital photos—that an archive could be
manifested through Fenestra in ways that could not havebeen easily achieved with physical photos—created
opportunities to support memorialization activities. For
Emi-H1 and Satoko-H2 it provided a resource to support
practices that their material conditions had largely
prevented. For Rikako-H3, Fenestra enabled her to draw on
new materials that opened up a wider range of experiences
than would have not been permitted in her formal butsudan.
Yet participants also desired to augment Fenestra in diverseand unexpected ways. Emi-H1 wanted to only include
images that highlighted one-to-one social bonds to honor
these relationships and her grandmother’s life. While
Rikako-H3 requested that both of her parents be present in
the cropped mirror image, which prompted her ritual of‘showing’ her parents photos of experiences she wishedthey could have been present at.
These examples help illustrate the complex, idiosyncratic,and evolving processes of socially constructing the identityof a departed loved one. As conceptualizations of thedeparted’s identity change, so too might rituals andpractices of memorializing their life. However, tools to
support these shifts as they unfold over time remain
underdeveloped. These findings are in parallel to recent
efforts in the HCI community articulating the need to
critically consider how interactive systems might shapepeople’s practices over long periods of time [e.g., 12,39].
There is a need for future research to explore more flexible
ways new technologies might be designed to represent
digital content associated with a departed loved one’s life asperspectives change, practices evolve, and thesetechnologies themselves may change hands acrossgenerations in the future.
Unintended consequences and broader implications—
Undesirable encounters also emerged with Fenestra. These
instances were triggered when the IR sensor embedded in
the round mirror was inadvertently triggered by lightingchanges in the local environment. Although Satoko-H2
interpreted such instances as extraordinary encounters, they
produced uncomfortable emotions for other participants.
These findings illustrate the sensitive thresholdmemorialization technologies operate on and how serious
consequences can emerge if the system manifests behaviors
that are unexpected and difficult interpret.
One possibility is that future research could engineer ahigher degree of contextual awareness into memorialization
systems to avoid such disruptions. Yet, it is possible that
other disturbing encounters could emerge from errors incomputational inferences about who is socially present andwhat digital content ought to be manifested. Our goal was
not to engineer a perfect ‘solution’ to digital domestic

memorialization. Rather, we aimed to sensitize this nascentdesign space for future exploration within the HCI
community. These findings make clear that sensing
processes within memorialization technologies need to betreated with critical caution and come with significant
potential pitfalls.
On a broader level, this study produced an unexpected
dilemma for our own research team. Fenestra is a bespoke
design artifact that participants knew they would not livewith after the study concluded. However, participants did
develop visible emotional connections to Fenestra andremoving it from their lives left us, the research team,feeling uneasy. Yet, it is likely unrealistic (or impossible)
for researchers to provide robust bespoke systems forparticipants to have and use indefinitely into the future.
New initiatives are emerging to support the appropriate
transfer of the departed’s online accounts to the bereaved[4,39]. However, it remains unclear how these issues should
be handled with bespoke design artifacts—they could open
up radically new way of conceptualizing memorialization
technologies, but also come with potentially serious
consequences. Recent work is starting to articulate potential
dangers for researchers operating in this nascent research
space [40]. There is a need to expand this discourse todevelop more effective strategies for sensitively handlingpotential issues for all stakeholders surrounding the
deployment (and possible extraction) of research products
and prototypes in the future.
CONCLUSION

We designed Fenestra to critically explore how interactive
technology could open up new opportunities for leveraging
digital materials to support practices of domestic
memorialization in Japan. Findings revealed opportunities
to support such practices in unique and meaningful ways,
and unintended consequences that new systems could raise.
Our study provided a rare example of a research-throughdesign project situated in the context of Tokyo, Japan.
There is a clear need for future work to expand to sites andpractices elsewhere in the world. Ultimately, we hope thisresearch will inspire the HCI community to explore
designing technology aimed at supporting people’s selfdetermined, evolving practices of memorializing andremembrance, now and well into the future.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Naohito Okude, Masa Inakage, Hideki Sunahara,
Masahiko Inami, and Susumu Shimazono for theirsupervision on the Fenestra project. We also thank ourstudy participants, the reviewers for their insightful
suggestions, and Carman Neustaedter and Rebecca Gulotta
for feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. This work is
supported in part by Keio University Graduate School ofMedia Design and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship
through the Social Science and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada.

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