Chapter 5. Concept upgrade & Defining a Problem
Manchester, UK
After spending a month in Moscow, making two impressive trips to Săpânţa and Novosibirsk, gathering feedbacks and making desk research, the concept Circle was upgraded.
This research proved my assumptions about the art influence and underlined the main trends, problems, and opportunities, that will be valuable for the next step of concept development.
This was also a pivot for the initial Circle of life. The initial Circle concept covered two different audiences: those cremated for the park and all digital audience who want to be remembered in a Memorium.
I decided to focus on the digital audience and leave the park as part of the natural surroundings of a museum.
[WHY]
- there are a number of places with trees for cremated and natural burials
- different eco-friendly funeral approaches are developing, not only parks for cremated
- a building with digital facilities is an expensive investment for the local natural graveyard space
- for disrupting a building, the web-service has bigger mission than being restricted to one natural graveyard
The building’s bigger mission will be shaped later after research. I took it as a tested frame on how to present digital content. My further research was focused on the digital content itself: how to create a life story and engage the audience.
Defining a Problem
General facts
The research shows that in the last 20 years the world was drastically transformed by the digital revolution and advances in medicine and technology. According to UNFPA in 2014, the population reached 7.2 billion. Half live an urban life. By 2050 the population is estimated to reach 9,7 billion with 7 out of 10 opting for city living. 232 million people are on the move: more than ever before.
In digital era the current active generation — millennials — has other values than the previous ones. Different surveys underline similar preferences among millennials that can be formulated in the following trends:
- Environmentally friendly;
- Personalized and customized;
- Culturally diverse;
- Cost efficient preferences;
- Digitalized.
Their behavior and preferences disrupt different industries’ business models like communication, traveling. Moreover these industries are disrupted by digital innovations.
Funeral industry problems
The funeral industry is also undergoing dramatic change due to urban and economic shifts.
- Burial ground is due to run out in the next 30 years.
- Funeral costs are rising and with that, pre-payment services are on the up.
- Alternatives practices for burial, cremation and disposal are emerging: resomation, natural burial, multi-storeyed graveyards.
- New markets have appeared: ashes ‘planted’ with a tree; turn ashes into a diamond, ring or firework; create fingerprint jewellery.
Digital media is gradually becoming an essential part of the funeral experience:
- Obituaries printed in newspapers have online counterparts so that families and friends far away can read death notices and express condolences.
- Mourning culture on social media is growing (Facebook has over 40 million dead accounts).
- Videos and slideshows now appear in monitors at funerals.
- Online farewell ceremonies and their records are now accessible.
- Memorial web sites give the opportunity to pay tribute in photos, words and gestures.
- Websites enable users to capture, store and pass on family history.
Focusing on remembrance
While working on the concept at Hyper Island we didn’t have time to explore how to create a story on Circle digital platform, but this is important element that I was going to investigate more. Digital is a simple quick tool to collect information and keep it for following generations. How will it look, taking into consideration the current behavior of “millennials”.
In everyday life, many of us share our photos, comments and thoughts freely. What about our digital legacies? Will digital legacies become the norm? Will a new practice of digital funerals and mourning appear? How will we be remembered? Do we actually want to be remembered? What will future generations learn about us from what we leave behind? Does thinking ahead and making plans improve our ability to take responsibility for life — right to the end? How do we want to be remembered in the 21st century?
The goal of this research is to understand the current value of digital technologies in funerals, tributes and memorializing — and what part creative thinking, art and nature can play.
For my Unique Value Proposition I focused on this direction — how to be remembered in the 21st century using digital, how to engage people to share their content for the next generations and the importance of merging the physical & digital experiences in this context.
Hypothesis
Before making research I made some assumptions using 5WHYs approach. Outlining general problem that digital environment’s potential is not used for remembrance and came to the following assumptions:
- Content is dispersed in different places (online and offline);
- Users have no time/no inspiring tool/no purpose to create a life story and keep memories -> don’t know what message to leave;
- People don’t think about creating a story or digital legacy, because it is not 1st priority;
- Low awareness of death and new options (be planted as a tree) because it is not the 1st priority and still a taboo;
- People forget stories about ancestors.
There are web-sites where you can create a story about yourself and pay tribute to someone whom you love, but all of them generally need manual input.
Nowadays we are freely generating and sharing big data keeping it in different online and offline spaces, it’s quite hard to pick 2–3 pictures out of 100. Every action needs time which we don’t have or don’t want to spend.
Manchester
For developing a Circle concept I came back to Manchester, stayed at Julie’s amazing home near Chorlton Water park and visited our sweet home Hyper Island.
