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Result
What happens with our digital lives when we pass away? Echo is a hybrid ritual that empowers people nearing the end of life and their loved ones to collaboratively shape how they will be remembered to honour memories of the deceased and support the grieving proces of the loved ones.
industry
Digital Legacies
My role
client
University project in collaboration with museum Tot Zover
Duration / year
6 weeks / 2024
Challenge
As we spend more of our lives online, our digital presence outlives us. After death, this data remains and is often unmanaged and complex for loved ones. The rise of “grief tech” offers ways to memorialise and cope through AI, but raises concerns around privacy, consent, and ethics.
Outcome
We created Echo, a service for curating and preserving your digital legacy. Through a reflective ritual, it helps you decide what to keep, delete, or store in your Legacy Key.
Echo consists of three elements:
1. Echo System - A guided platform to shape your digital legacy, with autonomy and care.
2. Legacy Key - A secure, personalised vault for your chosen cherished digital moments.
3. Echo Portal - Physical installations where loved ones can unlock your curated story through an immersive experience using the Legacy Key.
Project timeline
O1/
Empathize
Museum visit
We kicked off the project with a visit to the Tot Zover Museum in Amsterdam, exploring cultural rituals around death.
Key insights
Most people avoid planning their funeral—only 30% are prepared
In the Netherlands, death rituals focus more on honoring the death than the idea of an afterlife
Graveyards are seen as spaces for reflection, not just burial
Desk research
Explored emotional, technical, and legal aspects of digital afterlife.
Key insights
Digital legacies are hard to access due to legal and technical barriers
Social media isn't reliable for long-term preservation
Physical rituals and shared memories offer emotional comfort
Survey
55+ participants (ages 18–34), focusing on data preferences, control, and emotional needs.
Key insights
Photos and videos are most valued
Users want full control over what’s saved or deleted
Privacy is a top concern
Preference for physical + digital legacy blend
Expert interviews
Consulted experts in ethics and palliative care.
Key insights
Grief is personal, but also social
“Context collapse” complicates posthumous identity. We are not one person everywhere, we have separate identities depending on who we are with.
Tech should support—not imitate—the deceased
Autoethnography
We decided to “stalk” eachother to find out what type of different data we can find about eachother only knowing our first and last name
Key insights
A surprising amount of personal data is publicly accessible
Digital identity is fragmented and needs thoughtful curation
O2/
Define
We developed personas from the acquired research knowledge.
“How might we design hybrid rituals that empower end-of-life users shape their legacy, using both digital and physical experiences to honor memories and support the grieving process?”
Collection
Easy, intentional data selection with minimal automation.
Storage
Data should be stored safely in a long-lasting, physical object with emotional meaning, not in a cloud.
Visualisation & Interaction
The visualisation of the data should spark magic that gives meaning to the digital memories of the main user.
Thinking in systems
We seperated the ritual in 3 different processes according to the needs of the user.
Values definition
We defined our project values early on to guide decisions throughout. They were based on research, autoethnography, and our personal beliefs.
03/
ideation
Generating ideas
Brainstorming
Mind mapping
Brainwriting
Reverse brainstorming (bad ideas)
the 5 whys
storyboarding
Early concepts
After(life)movie: Seasonal memory uploads to a hard drive which after passing creates an aftermovie of the life of the deceased.
Memory Balloons: Interactive grief experience by “popping” / releasing emotional moments.
Portable jukebox: playing songs from playlists of the deceased.
The final hug: A small, enclosed space designed to feel like a warm embrace, offering a private moment to connect with your loved one through their curated digital memories.
Final concept: Echo
Building on earlier ideas and guided by our core values, we were deeply inspired by the "Final Hug," a concept that offers an intimate space for remembrance. However, we also recognized that grief is often a shared, social experience. So, we designed Echo to offer both personal and collective ways to experience a digital legacy, depending on the user’s preference.
Echo is a system that gives individuals full autonomy over how they want to be remembered. It allows them to curate their digital legacy and have it preserved in an immersive, meaningful experience.
Through the Echo website, users select which memories to include, such as photos, videos, audio, messages, and more. They also assign a Key Guardian who will receive this legacy after their passing. Once submitted, a physical Legacy Key is produced. Using AI, the selected content is assembled into a cohesive narrative stored within the key.
After the user’s passing, the Key Guardian receives the Legacy Key and can access the immersive experience at designated Echo Portals, listed on the website. Whether experienced alone or with others, it offers a powerful and personal way to reconnect with the memories of a loved one.
Echo website
A digital platform for users to:
Curate their legacy
Assign guardians
Choose what to delete/keep/store
Order the Legacy Key
autonomy
Legacy key
The legacy key stores all the chosen data by the deceased. Designed to represent the control the owner still has over their data even after death.
security
The immersive experience
An immersive installation where loved ones can unlock the curated memories using the Legacy Key, offering a sensory, social or solo remembrance space.
sparks emotion
User journey
Merging user journey between the deceased (User 1) and the person the deceased chose to leave their key with (User 2)
04/
Design
The logo represents an echo fading over time, just like memories, which become less clear as time passes.
05/
Prototyping & Testing
Overall notes on the experience:
I would like to have a curated version with the videos and pictures we share together
I would also like a more portable way to share the experience, instead of going all the way to the pods
Too many people experiencing the legacy at the same time make it less personal and emotional
Concluding Remarks
More testing and real-world feedback needed
Echo explores a deeply emotional topic, so more user testing is essential. Future iterations should include diverse users to better understand how different people engage with grief and legacy. We also need to explore how different variants such as physical environments affect the immersive experience.
Scalability and Accessibility
We see potential for Echo to evolve beyond physical installations—possibly into portable kits or VR—to make the experience more accessible and personal. However this would take away from the ritual which made us include the portals: The grieving people need to go to a specific place to experience the experience, similar to going to a grave to pay respect.
What I Learned
This project taught me how to balance empathy with innovation. I gained hands-on experience across research, branding, prototyping, and immersive design. Most of all, Echo showed me how design can bring comfort and connection during life’s hardest moments.
