New Understandings of Loss: Examining the Role of Reflective Technology Within Bereavement and Meaning-Making

Title of the Paper

New Understandings of Loss: Examining the Role of Reflective Technology Within Bereavement and Meaning-Making

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Mental Health Technology, Bereavement Support
• Keywords: Health, Design, Bereavement, Grief, Reflection, Meaning-Making, Constructivism

Research Background and Questions

• Problems or Challenges Identified by the Authors:

  • Bereavement is a unique and complex experience that often leads to short-term and long-term mental health issues (e.g., prolonged grief disorder, complicated grief).
  • Although reflective technologies have been shown to contribute to mental health support, their application in bereavement support remains unclear.
  • Current research lacks empirical exploration of how reflective technologies can provide bereavement support.

• Significance of the Problem:

  • Everyone experiences bereavement, which significantly impacts mental health, especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • In bereavement therapy, meaning-making has been proven to be a key process in improving grief outcomes.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • Constructivist psychotherapy emphasizes helping the bereaved rebuild meaning through reflection.
  • Game studies suggest that digital games can facilitate deep emotional reflection and exploration of grief themes.
  • This study selected the digital game GRIS as a case study to explore how reflective technologies can support bereavement through the lens of meaning-making theory.

Solution

• Proposed Solution by the Authors:

  • Propose a design direction combining constructivist grief psychotherapy with reflective technologies.
  • Conduct an experiment involving qualitative interviews and diary studies to explore how bereaved individuals reflect and make meaning while playing GRIS.

• Innovative Contributions:

  • This study represents the first empirical exploration in the field of reflective technologies for bereavement and the first application of constructivist psychotherapy theory in reflective technology design.
  • The design focuses include personalized user experiences, embedding user agency in the reflective process, and addressing reflective themes with an anti-nihilistic (non-nihilistic) approach.

• Implementation Steps:

  • Participants underwent three activities: background interviews, diary studies while playing the game, and follow-up interviews to discuss their reflective and meaning-making experiences.
  • Participant experiences were analyzed using reflection frameworks (e.g., Fleck and Fitzpatrick's levels of reflection) and the Innovative Moments (IMs) model from constructivist psychotherapy.

• Key Technologies Used:

  • The MDA framework (Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) in game design was used to understand how the game specifically supports reflection.
  • Research methods included semantic coding, affinity diagramming, and constructing theoretical connections between reflection and meaning-making.

Research Findings

• Specific Findings:

  • Participants experienced partial or complete meaning-making processes while playing GRIS, primarily manifesting as "Reflection Innovative Moments" (Reflection IMs).
  • Based on qualitative data, three design recommendations for reflective technologies were proposed: representing personalized bereavement experiences, embedding user agency, and focusing on novel and non-nihilistic reflections.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Proposed a specific design framework for bereavement support, addressing gaps in traditional reflective technology design.
  • The reflective support design in the game demonstrated that abstract or concrete narratives of bereavement could engage diverse grieving individuals.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • Over 70% of participants engaged in various levels of reflection, with some achieving new insights into their individual grief processes (R2-level reflection).
  • The experiment revealed tensions between the linear presentation of grief in the game's narrative (based on the Kubler-Ross five-stage model) and the nonlinear nature of real grief experiences.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations include the cultural and age homogeneity of the sample, exploration limited to a single technology (digital games), and lack of comparative studies across different media.
  • Future research directions include exploring the effects of different levels of reflection on grief support, how technology design can support an anti-nihilistic perspective, and comparing different technological mediums.

Conclusion and Outlook

• This study demonstrates the potential of reflective technologies in supporting bereaved individuals to rebuild meaning and provides specific recommendations for designing technologies aimed at supporting bereavement reflection and meaning-making.
• The proposed design recommendations and theoretical framework lay a solid foundation for the HCI community to further develop interactive technologies for bereavement support, while also highlighting unresolved issues in broader application contexts.