Crafting Remembrance Beyond the Self: Older Adults’ Digital and Material Legacies

Paper Title

Crafting Remembrance Beyond the Self: Older Adults’ Digital and Material Legacies

Publication Info

• Topic area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and end-of-life planning
• Keywords: digital legacy, post-mortem remembrance, artifact curation, older adults, Gerotranscendence, hybrid artifacts, end-of-life planning, memory, identity, HCI

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Existing HCI research on digital legacy and end-of-life planning focuses primarily on digital assets and social media platforms, often neglecting how individuals intentionally curate artifacts to shape their post-mortem remembrance. Current systems fail to account for the diverse preferences of older adults regarding how they wish to be remembered, by whom, and through which artifacts.
• Significance: Understanding older adults’ preferences for post-mortem remembrance is critical for designing systems that support meaningful legacy crafting, reduce emotional distress for survivors, and preserve intergenerational memories.
• Motivation and related work: Prior work has explored digital legacy management, artifact curation for memory, and social media’s role in post-mortem identity. However, these studies often overlook the intentionality behind curating for remembrance and the broader relational and temporal contexts older adults consider. This paper addresses these gaps by examining older adults’ perspectives on remembrance and their artifact curation practices.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The study investigates older adults’ preferences for post-mortem remembrance and their curation of physical and digital artifacts through semi-structured interviews. It applies Gerotranscendence theory to interpret findings and provide design implications for legacy crafting systems.
• Novelty:
  1. Expands the understanding of the subject and audience of post-mortem remembrance beyond the individual and immediate family to include intergenerational and community contexts.
  2. Highlights the role of embodied presence in artifacts (physical, temporal, and relational traces) in shaping remembrance.
  3. Explores the negotiation between physical and digital artifact affordances for legacy curation and storage.
  4. Proposes design directions for hybrid remembrance systems that integrate physical and digital artifacts.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  1. Conducted semi-structured interviews with 14 older adults (aged 65–83) recruited from a longitudinal study on end-of-life planning.
  2. Used reflexive thematic analysis to identify themes related to remembrance preferences, artifact curation, and the role of physical and digital media.
  3. Applied Gerotranscendence theory to interpret findings and inform design implications.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Participants’ sense of the subject of remembrance expanded from themselves to include ancestors, descendants, and shared intergenerational moments.
  • The audience of remembrance extended beyond family to include communities, students, and researchers.
  • Artifacts embodied physical (appearance, voice), temporal (life transitions, historical eras), and relational (intergenerational connections) traces.
  • Participants valued physical artifacts for their tactility and historical authenticity but preferred digital artifacts for longevity, searchability, and collaborative curation.
• Advantage over baselines: Provides a nuanced understanding of older adults’ intentionality in legacy crafting, addressing gaps in existing digital legacy systems that focus narrowly on asset management or social media memorialization.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Semi-structured interviews conducted via Zoom, lasting 50–75 minutes.
  • Participants were aged 65–83, primarily female, and from the Northeastern United States.
  • Data analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, with Gerotranscendence theory guiding interpretation.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited sample size and lack of ethnic and racial diversity.
  • Focused solely on planners’ perspectives; future work should include descendants and other audiences.
  • Interviews may not fully capture the material affordances of artifacts in situ; future studies could use ethnographic or longitudinal methods.

Summary

This study explores how older adults curate physical and digital artifacts to shape their post-mortem remembrance, expanding the understanding of both the subject and audience of remembrance. Using Gerotranscendence theory, it highlights the embodied presence in artifacts and the negotiation between physical and digital affordances. Findings suggest design opportunities for legacy crafting systems that support intergenerational narratives, audience-specific curation, and hybrid artifacts bridging physical and digital spaces. These insights contribute to HCI research on aging, digital legacy, and end-of-life planning, offering actionable directions for designing systems that honor older adults’ values and preferences.