Engaging With Death Online: An Analysis Of Systems That Support Legacy-Making, Bereavement, And Remembrance

Death is an inevitable part of life, but digital systems have been slow to address the complex issues that arise when a person passes away. As digital systems have become an increasingly important pail people's lives, so too have these systems begun to play a role in a number of practices related to death, such as legacy-making, bereavement, and remembrance. In this paper, we conduct a survey of seventy-five digital systems designed to support these practices. Building on prior work, we analyzed these systems to derive findings that articulate how digital technologies reflect how people think about and engage with death. Based on these l'indings, we generated strategies designed to help system designers grapple with the complex needs that result from navigating death online.