Process: 

Describe how you arrived out the outcome. What iterations, refinements, design decisions and changes were made?

Initially, I wanted it to be so that when they write or record a memory, an LED will light up. I’m envisioning that the LEDs will light up in a jar of LEDs or maybe there’s just one led that’s own by everyone involved in this community and that LED will light up when a memory is posted. In the first option, the mourner can visually see all the memories they recorded and in the second option, all the mourners can see when someone else has posted and maybe respond to it or feel better through commiserating or relating to the memory.

Eventually, that evolved into incense sticks because I was thinking about death rituals in my Vietnamese family tradition. 

Initially, I only want to add voicemails from the deceased, but eventually opened it up into any audio that helped reminded one of the deceased (e.g. recounts of stories and songs that trigger a memory of the deceased).

I initially had an idea to make it more high-fidelity, but my professor told me that the prototype got the idea across. I wanted to trigger visuals, too, but ultimately kept it simple.