epitaph: the digital afterlife – reflective article
I. Evolution of Capstone
A. Research
Epitaph started out as an idea for a web service that would allow its users a digital space to grieve and memorialize their loved ones, with the opportunity to continually add to it and make other things private. There is solid research behind this need, research culled from various outlets and to which links are available in my project. Mostly, the work is based on Drs. Michael Massimi and Andrea Charise, leaders in a subfield of Human-computer interaction called thanatosensitivity. Essentially, we are witnessing a new phenomenon where humans are leaving behind not only tangible possessions, but digital effects as well. What do we do with them? That is the essential question of my capstone. Current digital platforms are not designed with a user’s death in mind, which is thoughtless at best, and bad design at worst. Epitaph examined the ways in which humans are retooling existing web platforms to help with their grieving process, and to sort through the possessions of a lost loved one. The research was solid and helped me secure a Center for Undergraduate Research grant worth one thousand dollars. The research, while the core of everything, did not change much over the course of the year.
B. Concept
The essential story of epitaph never changed. The protagonist is dead, and supporting characters and the hidden protagonist are left grieving, and what is there to do? But the finer points of the concept certainly evolved over the course of the year. At the beginning of the capstone experience, I had felt strongly about doing the story in the form of an installation, with opportunities for open ended exploration of various devices and the formation of a story depending on how the viewer interacted with the devices. The story would function more as a character portrait, and it would challenge a lot of preconceived notions on the roles of technology in our everyday lives. But I was guided in another direction, and I settled on an open ended game scenario. Like the installation, but virtual. That was also said to not fit new media properly. Eventually, a series of inter-connected blogs were set up to tell the story. The exploration was still there, the story was still there, but the concept had changed from an exploration to more of a direct reading experience.
C. Tech Used
The technology used underwent the most transformation. Originally, I was going to use a computer, a smartphone, a tablet, and a smartwatch to showcase how our devices are telling our stories and how they stick around even when we’re gone. The next incarnation was an open-ended game using Python and Ren’Py as a game engine. The third and final incarnation of tech was actually WordPress and Tumblr, which fit my needs well.
D. Design
I originally wanted to keep things more modern day, more what I was personally familiar with. I’m a big believer in the adage of writing what one knows, so I wanted to keep it that way. But eventually, I realized that the people who would care the most about my capstone efforts would not come from the same generation, and I would need to target the older crowd. Also, the aesthetic of that time period was appealing, design-wise, for me. So, I kept the modern element to some extent, and made the older design sensibilities front and center. It worked well for the story, and it had the side-effect of showing the change of GUIs from the early 90s til now. It was a really interesting take on my capstone, just looking at the design and its evolution.
Example:
II. Assessment of Capstone
A. The Good
My capstone was ambitious in its subject matter. Not many people are willing to take on the ever-looming specter of death and spend a lot of time thinking about it, in a more sanitized form. It’s still a taboo, and likely always will be, at least for the foreseeable future. My capstone addressed an extremely important issue of people dying and leaving behind digital effects what is to be done with them. It looked into what happens when designers start being mindful of the fact that their users are aging, and sadly, dying. The content and the research were solid and I earned that grant.
The storytelling was bang-on. I am not confident about many things, but I do know that I can tell a story and I can tell it well. No matter what medium I went with, I knew the story was going to be effective and poignant and it would matter. And I was right.
B. The Bad
I thought the exhibition format of capstone night did not go well with my capstone. My capstone is an art piece, a thoughtful, quiet piece that explores important and delicate subject matter. An exhibition didn’t match well with it at all, and I had a difficult time getting people to look at my project. The most successful capstone night projects are ones that are large and colorful and loud. Drones? Good. Effective, and very memorable. Shout casting? Neat. Exciting, if a little unorthodox. A story that looks at death and tech? Perhaps too somber for such an event. So, in a way, while my project didn’t fail in this aspect, it didn’t quite fit with what would have worked more effectively in an environment such as that.
C. The Ugly
From September to May, I harbored a secret. Even after being told no about an installation, being discouraged on the grounds of cliché, I still wanted an installation. I had the experience of three previous capstone exhibitions behind me, and I remembered that the installations were always the most effective at gaining feedback, and at attracting users. I also remember enjoying them the most. In fact, the only ones I vividly remember were the ones that one could substantively interact with. I suppose this was a failure on my part, but not for reasons one would immediately think.
I failed because I did not advocate for myself. I remember a piece of paper on Jon’s office door in Chadbourne that mentioned rebels, innovators, and a third thing that comprised new media people. I look back now, and I realize that perhaps, I should have rebelled. I could have argued my point and backed it up with anecdotes from myself and others, and I probably would have been able to get my way if I pushed back hard enough. I might have had the capstone of my dreams, or I might have failed dismally – that isn’t clear, of course, but I could have done what those in new media do — I could have fought back for what I believed in. I’ll be honest here, though, I was scared to speak up and disagree with anything.
You see, I am a student who is about to run out of financial aid. Out of scholarships. I’m a low income student, the first in my family to attempt a degree. In this economy, and with college costing what it does, there are no room for mistakes. Failing a class is not an option – I’d lose my funding and have to drop out. Being in my situation is like walking a tightrope, high in the sky, with an anchor tied to your ankles. There’s no safety net to catch you if you slip. I cannot take chances, and I felt that fighting back against the professor’s ideas would have been too much of a risk, a chance that I could not take without putting the goal, the piece of paper that the last seventeen years of school had been building up to, in significant jeopardy.
If I didn’t do everything in my power to pass this class, I wouldn’t be able to come back and try again.
I could lose everything.
I mean, I’ve already been on the precipice of having to leave school more times than I’ve ever felt comfortable admitting to anybody, much less professors who make more money in a semester than my parents make in two years’ time.
With this knowledge on my shoulders, I sucked it up, I put my head down, and I did what was asked of me.
But is that a failure?
When I began writing this section, I certainly considered it a failure. But upon reflection, I realize that maybe not. I did what I needed to do to get what I needed to get done. And, unfortunately, for someone from my background, that’s what trying to get out of poverty is. Hustling, doing what needs to be done, personal feelings and preferences be damned. And so, I proved to myself that I can do what I need to do no matter the circumstances, and I can succeed overall, and that is a resounding success if I have ever seen one.
So while maybe the current form of my capstone wasn’t what I intended, and perhaps it could have been better. But no matter what, it is a symbol of my triumph over everything that has spent the last twenty-one years of my life trying to keep me down.
It is a success.
Appendix A: Annotated Bibliography
1. Memory Pool – this website is a memorial type website that is structured to be like social media. It’s in a similar vein to what I want to do, but is definitely not much more than a memorial page, while what I want to create is less of a place to remember and mourn but more of a place to discover and be happy. Memory pool tells stories, I want to enable users to create these stories.
2. Facebook of the Dead – This is actually an xkcd discussion over something that interests me with this capstone – cultural changes that online life, or death, rather, is bringing about. It just gives me some ideas for potential directions of my project and questions to consider as I move along in my capstone.
3. Death on Facebook – this is a Huffington Post article that also discusses what happens to social media users when they die – and the role of big companies like that. It also discusses the way Facebook is changing the way we look at death and grieving, even giving rise to new psychological phenomena, including one called “continuing bonds” where people no longer feel they have to “get over” the death of someone, but are actually embracing the fact that death doesn’t remove a person from your life, it just changes the relationship between the living and dead. I really think this will help me with learning about people’s attitudes about the internet and death.
4. Facebook after Death – In a similar vein of HuffPost, but Mashable. Makes me think about why I’m doing this, and what exact problem I’m trying to solve.
5. If I Die – This is a Facebook app that lets users create a message to be published upon the news of their death. It’s the first and only application of its kind, apparently. I think this is an interesting way to change how we look at death. I can imagine it would be really freaky though, say Grandma finally passed on and a couple days later she updates with a video…yeah. It’s still thought-provoking and makes me look at my capstone in a new light.
6. Facebook is Family History – this blogpost on an ancestry website is just a short piece encouraging the use of social media as a family history tool. This is more closely tied to what I want to do, but it just describes doing it. I want to mesh the two ideas – FB after death, and FB family history, together. This also poses some questions and sort of reaffirms why I am doing this capstone.
7. Thanatosensitivity – a Wiki entry on what the technical term is for what I’m trying to do — a humanistic approach to death and dying and human-computer interaction.
8. Death – This article talks about the way that internet services treat the material of a dead user. It also opens up different avenues than just what I was thinking.
9. Future of Death and the Internet – This is an article on PCMag that talks about the changing ways we deal with death that happens online, and whether it could help the grieving process to have connections. It also talked about services and how impersonal they were. I thought it was interesting to be able to look at current opinions on the culture of death online and looking at the current shortcomings of various services.
10. How the Internet is changing the way we treat death – This article talks about the business of death on the web, and the value of social profiles of telling the story of who we are. I think this article is a good way of reinforcing that what I’m wanting to do could be important, and hasn’t exactly been done yet, but it is worth thinking about because social media outlets aren’t going anywhere.
