Experiences in Designing
Technologies for Honoring
Deceased Loved Ones
William Odom, Daisuke Uriu, David Kirk,
Richard Banks, Ron Wakkary54© 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
DesignIssues: Volume 34, Number 1 Winter 2018

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Introduction
Material artifacts play highly significant roles in mediating people’s rituals of honoring the lives of deceased loved ones and dealing with the grief that results from loss. They can powerfully
evoke memories of the deceased and prompt reflections on mortality. Digital technologies are now a pervasive part of everyday
life, and new issues are emerging as they intersect with people’s
everyday experiences of bereavement and their rituals of adapting
to loss. We have undertaken two design investigations that focus
on new ideas for creating technologies that could better support
rituals of honoring deceased loved ones. Through our design-led
research, we created working prototypes in two different contexts:
Timecard was conceptualized and designed in the United Kingdom, and Fenestra was conceptualized and designed in Japan.
Each of these projects represents efforts to design novel technologies for supporting domestic rituals of honoring in ways that are
sensitive to the individual, social, and cultural contexts in which
they were created. The core goal of this paper is to describe andreflect on these design efforts and in doing so to provide insights
into creating technologies that enable the living to place and honor
the dead in the context of their everyday lives.
In the following section, we review key research in bothcontemporary grief theory/therapy and interaction design to situate and support our design-led approach. We then describe
insights that shaped Timecard and Fenestra and unpack the similarities and differences in design qualities of these artifacts thatemerged during their making. We conclude by interpreting thesereflections in terms of how these design artifacts place the dead ineveryday settings and then describing implications for interaction
design research.

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Background and Related Work
Through their loss of a loved one or by facing mortality, people areprofoundly shaped by their experiences of death. The grief resulting from bereavement can unsettle familiar practices, routines,
and interactions. Vast social science literatures have investigateddeath, bereavement, and grief across cultures. A salient thread in
this body of work makes clear that rituals of dealing with griefrequire sensitivity and delicate treatment on personal, social, andcultural levels.1 Cross-cultural investigations of loss have argued
that a multiplicity of approaches and interventions are needed tohelp the bereaved achieve personal rejuvenation and growth.2
Research in grief therapy has shown that personal rituals
can play an important role in dealing with loss and developing a
sense of emotional acceptance.3 Such rituals can positively shapeattitudes toward loss and support the bereaved in transitioning to
a new social role, even if these practices are culturally diverse.4
In synthesizing and interpreting a range of prior works ingrief therapy, Sas and Coman articulate three categories of personal rituals for adapting to loss: letting go, self-transformation, andhonoring.5 Rituals of letting go enable the bereaved to deal with andput to rest negative emotions by dispossessing artifacts that trigger
painful memories of the deceased.6 Rituals for self-transformation
trigger prospective thought in which the bereaved can process
negative emotions and identify future goals. Honoring rituals
nurture positive emotions by celebrating social bond(s) with thedeceased. Such rituals help to preserve the memory of a person
through objects and, in doing so, to support the bereaved in moving on from loss toward acceptance.7 Although objects used in honoring rituals take many forms, photos are among the mostpervasive kinds of possession used in these practices.8 Furthermore, the practice of creating assemblages of photographs andother artifacts can function as a therapeutic ritual for honoring
deceased loved ones and resolving grief.9
However, the proliferation of personal digital data ineveryday life is introducing new challenges for rituals of adapting
to loss. In particular, the lack of material presence and availability of digital possessions make the performance grief rituals morechallenging.10 This issue can be particularly problematic for digital
photos, which present the following challenges: (1) They lack theenduring presence and “causal durability” of paper photos, (2)they can be fragmented across several devices and online places,and (3) they require more maintenance and effort to be experienced.11 These issues and the general question of how technology isintersecting with bereavement are evidently emerging topics ofinterest among the broader interaction design community.12

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See, e.g., Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, David
Kessler, and Maria Shriver, On Grief andGrieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief
Through the Five Stages of Loss (NewYork: Scribner, 2014); and John Bowlby,
Attachment and Loss Volume 1: Attachment (New York: Basic Books, 1980).
2 See, e.g., Maurice Eisenbruch, “CrossCultural Aspects of Bereavement. II:
Ethnic and Cultural Variations in theDevelopment of Bereavement Practices,”
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 8, no. 4(1984): 315–47; and Dennis Goss andRobert Klass, “Spiritual Bonds to theDead in Cross-Cultural and Historical
Perspective: Comparative Religion andModern Grief,” Death Studies 23, no. 6(1999): 547–67.
3 See, e.g., Tony Walter, The Revival of
Death (London: Routledge, 1994).
4 Elizabeth Hallam and Jenny Hockey,
Death, Memory and Material Culture(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2001).
5 Corina Sas and Alina Coman, “Designing
Personal Grief Rituals: An Analysis of
Symbolic Objects and Actions,” Death
Studies 40, no. 9 (2016): 558–69; seealso Bronna D. Romanoff, “Rituals andthe Grieving Process,” Death Studies 22,
no. 8 (1998): 697–711.
6 For an interaction design perspective on
dispossession practices and coping withloss, see Corina Sas, Steve Whittaker,
and John Zimmerman, “Design for
Rituals of Letting Go: An Embodiment
Perspective on Disposal Practices
Informed by Grief Therapy,” ACM
Transactions on Computer-Human
Interaction 23, no. 4 (2016): 21.
7 Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason,
Passing On: Kinship and Inheritance inEngland (London: Routledge, 2013).
8 Jason Castle and William L. Phillips,“Grief Rituals: Aspects that Facilitate
Adjustment to Bereavement,” Journalof Loss & Trauma 8, no. 1 (2003): 41–71.
9 Mary Kohut, “Making Art from Memories: Honoring Deceased Loved Ones
Through a Scrapbooking Bereavement
Group,” Art Therapy 28, no. 3 (2011):
123–31.
10 Sas, Whittaker, and Zimmerman,“Design for Rituals of Letting Go: An
Embodiment Perspective on Disposal
Practices Informed by Grief Therapy,”
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human
Interaction 23, no. 4 (2016): 21.

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Some investigations have specifically focused on how technologies mediate efforts to honor deceased loved ones. One area ofwork has investigated how social networking sites bring grieving
practices out of public and private discourses and into the everyday lives of various social audiences.13 Others have focused on thedesign and study of tangible computational artifacts for supporting collocated and distributed rituals of mourning and remembrance.14 Drawing on these examples and many others, Moncur
and Kirk offer a framework for designing digital memorials; they
articulate the need to explore the role of technologies shaping
practices for the post-self—how the identity of the departed issocially constructed, situated, and placed among the living.15 They
also highlight the need to better take into account how personaland cultural rituals should influence the design of technologies forhonoring the deceased. Such work sits against a backdrop of
research among the interaction design community that more generally explores how reflection and reminiscence might be bettersupported with technology.16
In parallel to these works, we have seen a growing interestin the development of new knowledge through the construction ofdesign artifacts. For example, Fallman posits the fundamental
activity of design-led research as giving form to previously nonexistent artifacts to uncover new knowledge that otherwise would
not have been revealed.17 Several other scholars have articulated
design-oriented approaches that emphasize how designing interactive systems can develop nascent, underexplored research spaces.18
More recent research has pointed to the value of bespoke designinterventions for deepening reflection on complex familial andpersonal orientations to ritual activities in domestic spaces.19 These
works highlight the need for more examples of design-led research
to develop a foundation from which future theoretical or empirical
works can be framed and developed.
Collectively, these strands of research have made important
contributions to understanding issues of death, bereavement, andrituals for adapting to loss. They also call attention to how complex
this emerging space is for interaction design and make clear theneed to develop different strategies that help sensitize it. Our work
modestly tries to bring together key elements of these different
strands. Specifically, we want to investigate how technologies canbe designed to better support honoring rituals in everyday life. We
do so by grounding our discussion in the design of two devices
that exemplify new ideas for creating technologies to support rituals of honoring deceased loved ones.20

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11 Nancy Van House, “Personal Photography, Digital Technologies, and the Usesof the Visual,” Visual Studies 26, no. 2(2011): 125–34. See also Daniela Petrelli
and Steve Whittaker, “Family Memories
in the Home: Contrasting Physical andDigital Mementos,” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 14, no. 2 (2010): 153–69;
and, William Odom, John Zimmerman,
and Jodi Forlizzi, “Placelessness, Spacelessness, and Formlessness: Experiential
Qualities of Virtual Possessions,” inProceedings of the 2014 Conference on
Designing Interactive Systems, eds.
Ron Wakkary, Steve Harrison, Carman
Neustaedter, Shaowen Bardzell, and Eric
Paulos (New York: ACM, 2014), 985–94.
12 Prior interaction design research has
explored issues such as the managementof the deceased’s digital possessions,the creation of support systems for the
bereaved, and how digital systems shapepractices of legacy-making. See Michael
Massimi, William Odom, Richard Banks,and David Kirk, “Matters of Life andDeath: Locating the End of Life in Lifespan-Oriented HCI Research,” in Proceedings of the 2011 SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems,
eds. Desney Tan, Bo Begole, and Wendy
Kellogg (New York: ACM, 2011), 987–96.
13 See, e.g., Tony Walter, Rachid Hourizi,
Wendy Moncur, and Stacey Pitsillides,“Does the Internet Change How We Die
and Mourn? Overview and Analysis,”OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying 64,
no. 4 (2012): 275–302; and Jed Brubaker,
Gillian R. Hayes, and Paul Dourish,“Beyond the Grave: Facebook as aSite for the Expansion of Death andMourning,” The Information Society 29,
no. 3 (2013): 152–63.
14 See, e.g., Daisuke Uriu, Takahiro
Ogasawara, Naohito Shimizu, andNaohito Okude, “MASTABA: theHousehold Shrine in the Future Archived
Digital Pictures,” in Proceedings ofthe 2006 International Conference andExhibition on Computer Graphics andInteractive Techniques, ed. John
Finnegan (New York: ACM, 2006), 151;
and Wendy Moncur, Miriam Julius,
Elise van den Hoven, and David Kirk,“Story Shell: The Participatory Designof a Bespoke Digital Memorial,” inProceedings of the 2015 Participatory
Innovation Conference, eds. Rianne

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16

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19

Design Research Cases: Timecard and Fenestra
In this section we describe two devices that we created througha design-led approach. We selected these cases based on our intimate knowledge of their making. Timecard was designed in the
United Kingdom and Fenestra in Japan, and these differing contexts shaped design decisions.21 However, both projects share some
important similarities in their form, materials, and interactivity. In
both designs we aimed to create computational artifacts that could
enable people to “open up” by initiating and exploring the experience of honoring a deceased loved one’s life and then bring theexperience “to a close” when desired. Previous work has described
this dynamic aspect of honoring rituals as highly significant but
not as well supported by digital technology.22 We also wanted toenable people to more easily engage in rituals of embodying or
situating digital content, symbolic of deceased loved ones, in significant domestic artifacts and spaces. Prior research has highlighted that these kinds of actions can be valuable aspects ofrituals adapting to loss over time.23 However, this motivation has
not been directly applied in the design of new technologies forsupporting honoring rituals. These two factors shaped the designof both Timecard and Fenestra.
Timecard
We designed Timecard to explore how integrating digital photos
along a timeline could enable people to construct, interact, and livewith a tangible representation of a deceased loved one’s life as aform of honoring. Family members are able to upload digital photos via a web interface that transfers them to the Timecard device.
When photos are uploaded, the person performing the upload
must attribute a specific date detailing when the photo was taken;
they also have the option of including additional textual metadata,
which could take the form of personal reflections about thedeceased. People can also select metadata that details historicalevents happening in the United Kingdom around the time periodthat the photo was taken (e.g., the United Kingdom votes to join
the European Union (EU), in 1975). These design choices had two
motivations. First, we wanted the bereaved ones to be able torecord and embed their own personal narratives about specificinstances in the deceased one’s life; such acts of honoring can play
an important role in adapting to the loss.24 Second, including historical metadata can help better contextualize what was happening
in different life stages of the deceased for younger generations.
These historical elements could trigger reminiscence and sharing

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Valkenburg and Jacob Buur (The Hague
University of Applied Sciences, 2015),
470–77.
Wendy Moncur and David Kirk, “AnEmergent Framework for Digital
Memorials,” in Proceedings of the2014 Conference on Designing
Interactive Systems, eds. Ron Wakkary,
Steve Harrison, Carman Neustaedter,
Shaowen Bardzell, and Eric Paulos(New York: ACM, 2014), 965–74.
See, e.g., David Frohlich and RachelMurphy, “The Memory Box,” PersonalTechnologies 4, no. 4 (2000): 238–40;
David Kirk and Abigail Sellen, “On
Human Remains: Values and Practicein the Home Archiving of CherishedObjects,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 17, no. 3 (2010):
10; and Dan Cosley, Victoria Schwanda
Sosik, Johnathon Schultz, S. Tejaswi
Peesapati, and Soyoung Lee, “Experiences with Designing Tools for Everyday
Reminiscing,” Human–Computer
Interaction 27, no. 1-2 (2012): 175–98.
Daniel Fallman, “Design-Oriented
Human-Computer Interaction,” inProceedings of the 2003 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems, eds. Gilbert Cockton, Panu
Korhonen, Victoria Bellotti, and Tom
Erickson (New York: ACM, 2003), 225–32.
For example, William Gaver, “WhatShould We Expect from Research
Through Design?,” in Proceedings ofthe 2012 SIGCHI Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems, eds.
Ed Chi, Kristina Höök, Susanne Bødker,
and Dan Olsen (New York: ACM, 2012),
937–46; and John Bowers, “The Logicof Annotated Portfolios: Communicating
the Value of Research Through Design,”
in Proceedings of the 2012 Conferenceon Designing Interactive Systems, eds.
Patrick Olivier, Peter Wright, Eli Blevis,
and Elisa Giaccardi (New York: ACM,
2012), 68–77.
See, e.g., David Kirk, David Chatting,Paulina Yurman, and Jo-Anne Bichard,“Ritual Machines I & II: Making Technology at Home,” in Proceedings of the 2016
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, eds. Allison Druin,
Jofish Kaye, and Cliff Lampe (New York:ACM, 2016), 2474–86. See also William
Odom, Abigail Sellen, Richard Banks,David Kirk, Tim Regan, Mark Selby, Jodi

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Forlizzi, and John Zimmerman, “Designing for Slowness, Anticipation and ReVisitation: A Long-Term Field Study of the
Photobox,” in Proceedings of the 2014
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, eds. Matt Jones,
Philippe Palanque, Albrecht Schmidt, andTovi Grossman (New York: ACM, 2014),
1961–70.
20 For both Timecard and Fenestra, we
aimed to create design artifacts thatwere highly resolved, final, and actual
devices (rather than designing research“prototypes” that might be in-process orprovisional). See, e.g., William Odom,
Ron Wakkary, Youn-kyung Lim, Audrey
Desjardins, Bart Hengeveld, and Richard
Banks, “From Research Prototype to
Research Product,” in Proceedings of the2016 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, eds. Allison
Druin, Jofish Kaye, and Cliff Lampe (NewYork: ACM, 2016), 2549–61.

of stories about the life of the deceased one by older generations
with others, which can also function as a valuable social ritual ofhonoring.25 We envisioned interactions with Timecard as an ongoing process as family members and friends incrementally constructed an increasingly rich and textured temporal representationof the deceased one’s lifespan. With these interaction design
choices, we wanted to open a space for reflection on each newelement that was introduced into Timecard and, potentially, what
its significance was in the context of the lives of both the deceased
and the bereaved ones.
The main component of Timecard is an interactive touch
screen (see Figure 1); photos are displayed here, and the timeline
can be navigated by swiping left to go deeper into the past (i.e.,earlier in the deceased one’s life) or swiping right to go closer tothe present (e.g., later in the deceased one’s life). When a photo in
the linear timeline is tapped, it expands to a full screen view, andany metadata attached is situated next to it. We encased Timecard
in European Oak because we wanted its material aesthetics to
evoke a sense of the warm qualities associated with other enduring domestic artifacts.
In our initial prototype, the touch screen remained visible
and uncovered, so that it operated much like a digital photo frame(as in Figure 1). However, because of how and where it might be

Figure 1
Initial prototype of Timecard. Photo: Microsoft
Research. Used with permission.

Figure 2 (a and b)
Front-facing hinged doors added to
Timecard. Photo: Microsoft Research.
Used with permission.

2a2bplaced in domestic spaces (e.g., in prominent or central locations)this visibility ultimately made Timecard feel too present and conspicuous. Such visibility interfered with our goal of creating adevice that could come into the foreground of domestic life when it
was drawn on in an honoring ritual, but then would fade into thebackground when the ritual had come to an end; we considered
the placement of the dead within the domestic space during bothritual and non-ritual activities. To make Timecard’s touchscreen
less obtrusive, we included hinged oak doors behind which the
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21 For more details on earlier independent
field studies of Timecard and Fenestra,
see William Odom, Richard Banks, David
Kirk, Richard Harper, Siân Lindley, andAbigail Sellen, “Technology Heirlooms?
Considerations for Passing Down andInheriting Digital Materials,” in Proceedings of the 2012 SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems,
eds. Ed Chi, Kristina Höök, Susanne
Bødker, and Dan Olsen (New York: ACM,
2012), 337–46.; and Daisuke Uriu andWilliam Odom, “Designing for Domestic
Memorialization and Remembrance: A
Field Study of Fenestra in Japan,” in Proceedings of the 2016 SIGCHI Conferenceon Human Factors in Computing Systems,
eds. Allison Druin, Jofish Kaye, and Cliff
Lampe (New York: ACM, 2016), 5945–57.
22 William Odom, Richard Harper, Abigail
Sellen, David Kirk, and Richard Banks,“Passing On & Putting to Rest: Understanding Bereavement in the Context
of Interactive Technologies,” in Proceedings of the 2010 SIGCHI Conference on
Human Factors in Computing Systems,
eds. Elizabeth Mynatt, Keith Edwards,
and Tom Rodden (New York: ACM, 2010),
1831–40.
23 For prior work exploring this themefrom a grief therapy perspective, see
Sas and Coman, “Designing Personal
Grief Rituals”; and from an interaction
design perspective, see William
Odom, Richard Banks, and Dave Kirk,“Reciprocity, Deep Storage, and Letting
Go: Opportunities for Designing Interactions with Inherited Digital Materials,”Interactions 17, no. 5 (2010): 31–34.
24 Castle and Phillips, “Grief Rituals:
Aspects that Facilitate Adjustment toBereavement,” Journal of Loss &Trauma 8, no. 1 (2003): 41–71.
25 For research on the therapeutic role ofshared experiences of reminiscence insupporting social rituals of honoring the
lives of departed loved ones, see Paul
Rosenblatt and Carol Elde, “Shared
Reminiscence About a Deceased Parent:
Implications for Grief Education and Grief
Counseling,” Family Relations (1990):
206–10; and David E. Balk, “Death,Figures 3a and 3b
Timecard opened up for an honoring ritual(left) and placed among everyday artifacts
and spaces (right). Photo: Microsoft Research.
Used with permission.

3b

Bereavement and College Students: A
Descriptive Analysis,” Mortality 2, no. 3(1997): 207–20.
60

screen could be hidden (see Figure 2). The finger holes allow thedoors to be opened easily so that users can activate and engage
with the underlying touchscreen interface. Collectively, these
design decisions were intended to support a range of experienceswith Timecard, from storing it away, to simply living with itamong other things in the home, to actively engaging in rituals ofhonoring the deceased by constructing, exploring, and sharing aphotographic timeline of their lifespan (see Figure 3).
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3aFigure 4
Fenestra’s three wirelessly connected physicalartifacts, candleholder, circular mirror, andphoto frame, among other domestic artifacts.
Photo: Daisuke Uriu.

FenestraWe designed Fenestra to explore how embodying digital photos
in a computational artifact could support everyday practices ofhonoring the lives of deceased loved ones in Japan. The design ofFenestra’s interaction and aesthetics drew inspiration from thebutsudan, a Japanese Buddhist home altar (see Figure 4), as well asfrom symbolic forms commonly found in Japanese Buddhist
temples. In Figure 4, a garment and plant are juxtaposed with thecandleholder, circular mirror, and photo frame of Fenestra. During
the initial part of our design process, we observed four households’ practices with their butsudan in the Tokyo area and visitedseveral traditional Zen Buddhist temples across Japan. These activities helped sensitize us to the symbolic forms, materials, and practices present in these sites. Circle and square shaped windows
were common in many Buddhist temples we visited (see Figure 5).
In Zen Buddhism, the circle symbolizes the afterlife paradise,
whereas the square represents the lower (i.e., living) world. Candles also commonly populate altars and temples; candlelight symbolizes the journey of the deceased’s spirit to the afterlife.
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Figure 5
Kisenan temple (Kamakura, Japan). Photo:
Daisuke Uriu.

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26 Fenestra’s design was in part inspired byan earlier project called ThanatoFenestra,
an art installation that speculatively explored a potential future where bereaved
family members could remember theirancestors by experiencing photographs
projected onto a circular canvas. For
more details on ThanatoFenestra, see
Daisuke Uriu and Naohito Okude,“ThanatoFenestra: Photographic Family
Altar Supporting a Ritual to Pray for
the Deceased,” in Proceedings ofthe 2010 Conference on Designing
Interactive Systems, eds. Kim Halskov
and Marianne Graves Petersen (NewYork: ACM, 2010), 422–25.

The three wirelessly connected artifacts of Fenestra—themirror, photo frame, and candleholder (see Figure 6)—aredesigned as a visual “family,” each handcrafted from teakwood.26
Family members can upload photos through a web service thatthen transfers them to Fenestra. The mirror is a custom-cut, circular piece of one-way mirror glass, which has an LCD display
behind it. We gave the mirror a circular form as a subtle culturalreference to Zen Buddhism. The mirrored glass creates a slightreflection of the user’s face, overlaid onto a close up of a deceased
loved one’s face when the circular screen is activated. We wanted
to create this juxtaposition to potentially open a space of contemplative reflection on the relation of the viewer’s own life to that ofthe deceased—a quality of experience that seemed to commonly
emerge with traditional butsudan altars. The photo frame consistsof a tablet computer embedded in a wooden case. The photo frame
wirelessly receives signals from the candleholder and mirror. The
candleholder is embedded with sensors that detect variations in
the candle flame movement and brightness. When a candle is lit,
all sensors continuously send to the photo frame data regarding
the brightness and movement of the candle’s flame. By using wireless connectivity, our goal was to support a wide range of possible
configurations in the home. The candle could be moved elsewherein the home, as could the other components of Fenestra. Thesedesign decisions were intended to allow mourners to engage in rituals that would interweave other symbolic and important artifacts
with Fenestra over time. These design decisions are counter toextant practices of demarcating specific spaces within a Japanesehome for ritual and remembrance of the deceased.

Figure 6
The Candle, Candlelight, and Framed photos
of Fenestra. Photo: Daisuke Uriu.

Discussion and Conclusion
We have described the design-led processes undertaken in the
United Kingdom and Japan to better understand how technologies
could be designed to support honoring rituals. This work touches
on complex, subtle, and diverse matters of individual and social
rituals for honoring deceased loved ones, remembering their lives,and adapting to their loss over time.
At a high level, our design decisions for Timecard andFenestra aimed to support a broad range of interactions and experiences, interwoven with domestic practices: They might serve as arich resource for honoring rituals, be casually encountered against
the backdrop of everyday life, or simply be stored away. In thiswork, we began an exploration of the enculturated and ritualized
placement of remains. In the Japanese context, prominent (andenduring) placement is more commonplace, which shaped ourdecisions to design Fenestra in a form that allowed the living tomove Fenesra among different domestic spaces and artifacts and,in so doing, to demarcate personalized places in the home for rituals and remembrance of the dead. 28 For UK homes, Timecard
required a modified design to provide options for less prominence.

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27 The cropped circular images are areference to the iei—an image typicallycreated by a third-party Japanese
funeral company. The iei photo isalways edited to depict a portrait of thedeparted against a neutral background;a print of it is then made, framed, andshown at the departed’s Japanesememorial ceremony. Because the iei
photo is closely tied to formal ceremonies, we chose not to edit out the backgrounds of the cropped circular images
to emphasize the everyday nature ofFenestra as a domestic technology. For
more details on the phenomenon of theiei photo, see Robert John Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 1974).
28 This decision parallels contemporary
trends in Japan that indicate a broadersocial acceptance of less traditional andmore personalized ritual practices of honoring deceased loved ones in the home.
For more details, see Hikaru Suzuki,“Beyond Ancestor Worship: Continued
Relationship with Significant Others,”
Death and Dying in Contemporary Japan(2013): 141.

We decided to use candlelight as the primary “input”
because it offers a tangible way to bring up the digital photos,
while not requiring additional interaction from the user. When acandle is lit in the candleholder, the photo frame shows images ofthe departed loved one (see Figure 6). We developed a computational script to generate cropped, circular, portrait-like images
from these photos. These cropped images simultaneously would
appear in the mirror when the photo was displayed in the photoframe.27 Additional pairings of these photos and cropped images
are displayed based on changes in the candlelight’s brightness andmovement. If the candlelight shimmers from a slight breeze, asimilar shimmering visual effect manifests across the photo’s
image in the mirror. If the flame wavers more strongly, Fenestra
cycles through photo pairings in a motion closely tied to theflame’s movement. As the candle dims over time, the photos do,too. When the candle goes out, all screens are dimmed and remain
off. These decisions were motivated by our desire to leveragefamiliar material practices already associated with Japanese ceremonies and rituals used to honor the deceased. We also wanted to
draw on candlelight as an unpredictable and finite input mechanism to emphasize that the act of meditating on the lives of
deceased loved ones is a form of honoring that is somewhat
unstructured and could eventually come to a close, in this case by
extinguishing the candle.

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29 Kirk and Sellen, “ On Human Remains:
Values and Practice in the Home
Archiving of Cherished Objects,”
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human
Interaction 17, no. 3 (2010): 10.
30 Hallam and Hockey, Death, Memory
and Material Culture, (Bloomsbury
Academic: London).
31 Sas, Whittaker, and Zimmerman,“Design for Rituals of Letting Go: An
Embodiment Perspective on Disposal
Practices Informed by Grief Therapy,”
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human
Interaction 23, no. 4 (2016): 21.
32 Mary Kohut, “Making Art from
Memories: Honoring Deceased
Loved Ones Through a Scrapbooking
Bereavement Group,” Art Therapy 28,
no. 3 (2011): 123–31; Castle and Phillips,“Grief Rituals: Aspects that Facilitate
Adjustment to Bereavement,” Journalof Loss & Trauma 8, no. 1 (2003):
41–71; and; see also Jeanne Thibo
Karns, “Scrapbooking During Traumaticand Transitional Events,” Journal of
Clinical Activities, Assignments &Handouts in Psychotherapy Practice 2,
no. 3 (2002): 39–47.
33 Designers increasingly see the needto develop technologies and adopt a
long-term perspective on how they
could be used across generations andon how stakeholders might be affected.
See Batya Friedman and Lisa P. Nathan,“Multi-Lifespan Information System
Design: A Research Initiative for the
HCI Community,” in Proceedings of the2010 SIGCHI Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems, eds.
Elizabeth Mynatt, Keith Edwards, andTom Rodden (New York: ACM, 2010),
2243–46.

Such practices of layering and spatializing of remains havebeen noted by Kirk and Sellen, who demonstrate the ways inwhich memory-related artifacts might be distributed in a home.
In this work, “deep storage” was invoked as a metaphor describing
how cherished objects would be retained but kept from view orfrom persistent interaction, while other objects were interactedwith in everyday practices (i.e., functional storage).29 We saw theneed for such flexible orientation to, and placing of, artifacts in thedesign of both devices.
The physical qualities of Timecard and Fenestra also
allowed for digital materials symbolic of the deceased to be
more fluidly situated near other significant artifacts, places, andpeople in the home. We explored how the materiality of memorial artifacts intersected with space; the design and the spatiality
were interwoven to dynamically (re)configure relationships tothe deceased. 30 Nonetheless, adjusting to loss and dealing withbereavement can unfold unpredictably over time. Our design
decisions created technologies that persisted as invitations to enact
an honoring ritual as needed or appropriate. In this way, Timecard
and Fenestra offer examples of how digital technologies can be
designed to allow the living to place memorial artifacts on theirown terms and to support the “doing” of grief.31
Timecard and Fenestra also exhibited key differences, particularly in terms of how the devices displayed images of the deadon their respective screens. Timecard’s design evokes a linear conception of time by situating the deceased along a timeline representing her or his lifespan. Through the piecemeal actions of
selection, placement, and curation of images (and possibly historical metadata to contextualize these images), the bereaved ones cangenerate a photographic timeline of the deceased one’s life. This
design decision was intended to build on and mobilize priorresearch in grief therapy that highlights the value of constructing
material photographic assemblages as mechanisms to process
grief, to reminisce, and to share stories about the deceased. 32
Importantly, Timecard’s photographic timeline is continuous andnot bound solely to the life of the deceased. By enabling the
bereaved ones to connect images of their own ongoing life with thedeparted, this design decision aimed to create a situated place forbridging the images of both the living and the dead across a
broader temporal space that encompasses multiple lifespans.33 In
addition to supporting honoring rituals, these design decisions
offered support for rituals of self-transformation, as the bereaved
ones prospectively consider their own life in relation to the dead.
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34 Such rituals can be important for the
bereaved ones in continuing their social
bonds with the dead, while also moving
on with personal life goals—a notion
discussed in Kenneth Doka, “Therapeutic
Ritual,” in Techniques for Grief Therapy:
Creative Practices for Counseling the
Bereaved, ed. Robert Neimeyer (NewYork: Routledge, 2012), 340–43.
35 Prior works have begun to describe social
tensions emerging from discrepancies indigitally recorded narratives of past experiences and conflicting accounts ofevents that had transpired among people.
See, e.g., Liam Bannon, “Forgetting as a
Feature, Not a Bug: The Duality of Memory and Implications for Ubiquitous Computing,” CoDesign 2, no. 01 (2006): 3–15;
and William Odom, “Understanding LongTerm Interactions with a Slow Technology: An Investigation of Experiences with
FutureMe,” in Proceedings of the 2015
SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, eds. Woontack
Wood and Kori Inkpen (New York: ACM,
2015), 575–84.

the living and the dead over time.34 However, the timeline metaphor in Timecard’s design requires people to input digital images
to which they assign precise dates, potentially representing events
that happened years in the past. This exacting, highly structured
quality could produce unintended consequences for the bereaved
ones if conflicting recollections emerged among the living regarding precisely when and what transpired at past events, and who isaccountable for “correctly” recording them in the system.35 Better
understanding these concerns seems a crucial part of designingtechnologies that sensitively support rituals of honoring and selftransformation and, more generally, the persistence of a family’s
digital legacy across generations.
Fenestra represents a contrasting approach in which weleveraged candlelight as an unpredictable means of input to placeand display digital photos of the deceased on its screens. Our
intent was to cede control to the system to support meditative
contemplation of the deceased as a form of honoring, much likewhat we observed in ritual uses of the butsudan. Fenestra places a
cropped portrait image of the dead in juxtaposition to an image ofher or him within a broader social context with the aim of supporting a range of ritualized experiences, from deep contemplation of
the deceased to reflection on shared experiences. A momentary
shimmering effect in the images of the dead when Fenestra
detected candlelight flickers supported this goal further by redirecting attention toward the image of the dead (or other attendantmaterial artifacts), as well as by emphasizing the ephemeral natureof the ritual itself. This approach exhibits a high degree of randomness and clearly contrasts with the precise and deliberate placingof images of the dead in Timecard. This strategy offers promise tosupport mindful contemplation of the dead while abdicating control. Yet, uncomfortable emotions also might emerge in encountering an image unexpectedly, evoking feelings of loss.
These insights point to key complexities in designing technologies to support honoring rituals in different individual, social,and cultural contexts. Our comparison of Timecard and Fenestra
makes clear that enough structure is required to frame, organize,
and place digital images of the dead in the everyday settings of theliving. Yet, too much structure or openness might divert attention
away from the ritual at hand and result in conflict over the memory of the deceased. Our work contributes new insights for navigating this complex threshold and for sensitively placing andhonoring the dead among the living. Design decisions in Timecard
and Fenestra critically shaped the placement of the dead among
artifacts and spaces of the living, as well as through the devices

Acknowledgements
This work is supported in part by an SSHRC Insight Development Grant, Keio University Graduate School of Media Design,
and Microsoft.

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themselves. Comparing these designs has demonstrated the benefit of supporting flexible orientation and placement of memorial
artifacts as the processing of grief by the living unfolds andchanges over time. Our discussion has also revealed divergent
ways that digital technologies can support the curation, placement,
and experience of photographic assemblages of the dead in ritual
practices of honoring and self-transformation. In this way, themesin the literature related to honoring the dead have been revealed inour design work, as have design insights that can be extended tothe creation of future technologies that support the complex processes of adapting to the loss of a loved one by honoring their continued and evolving place in our lives after they are gone.