Overview
Client: University Project
Industry: Death-care
Role:UX&UI Designer
Duration: ~2 months
Project Intro
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The challenge
When it comes to death and dying there is a big cloud of fear, misperceptions and the nagging feeling of: this is how it’s always been done, it’s too risky to challenge that. Not to mention that the death-care industry seems to be completely untouched by innovation.
I asked myself: how can I as a UX Designer contribute to relief negative emotions by using technology in an innovative way? Obviously no app in the world can or should take away the sadness, but what it can do is giving space to grief without having to worry about other things on top of that.
The design-thinking process helped me to tackle the difficult topic of “rebranding death”.
In order to challenge my assumptions and to identify user needs, I conducted a survey with 30 participants aged 22-60 to explore a variety of opinions. I also interviewed 5 individuals to find out about pain points.
Key take-aways
Information has to be made more accessible. There is a need for a central platform guiding users through the planning process and at the same time informing about personalised options and innovative methods.
The industry is lacking innovation. An online approach can help to make the planning process faster, easier and more accessible.
There are social and cognitive issues complicating the planning process for individuals who have to plan someone else’s funeral (e.g impact of grief on cognitive planning skills). Pre-planning ones one funeral can be seen as the most advantageous method.
Green funerals are a key trend.
The main pain-point for pre-planning one’s own funeral is fear, because of the way it is perceived: dark, frightening, complicated.
Based on these findings I formulated my aim: Make the topic of death more approachable for our generation, relief them from anxieties and the darkness surrounding the topic. And the objective: Developing an app to pre-plan your own funeral within an easy, joyful and more personalised experience.
Affinity mapping
In order to ensure that all the facts and opinions gathered will have their impact on my design choices, I created an affinity map. It helped me to get an overview and also to structure thoughts into categories.
Defining my user group
To personify my typical app-user, I synthesised my research findings to create 3 personas, one for each main use case. To look deeper into their thinking patterns and emotions I also created an empathy map (download full report to see it).
In general, I want to address the generation aged 18-50. This is because younger people probably lack matureness and interest in the topic. On the other hand, older people are mostly very connected to traditional funerals and there is no need for change. Also, can you picture your 90-year-old grandma planning her funeral on an smartphone-app …me neither.
I further identified two main categories of user groups:
1) People who are not threatened by death yet, because:
a) They simply want to relief their family from a difficult planning-process.
b) They are interested in alternative, very personalised or green funerals.
2) People who are facing death, because:
a) They are looking for an easier, faster and less threatening way of planning.
b) They want to maintain their autonomy and integrity when physically impaired.
Translate needs into features
In the next stage, I conveyed my key findings into suitable solutions. To gain an overview over the features that my app needs to accommodate on each level of emotional design (visceral, behavioural and reflective, more details in full report), I created this table.
App flow
As a final step before prototyping, I thought about the information hierarchy of my app by creating an app flow. Through online research I incorporated all necessary steps for funeral planning and added valuable extras (e.g. personal recording) to create an USP for my app.
Based on a paper prototype I developed interactive and clickable wireframes in sketch to create a more realistic impression of my app.
I tested these wireframes with an in-person qualitative user test to understand the user reactions, frustrations and the general usability.
