PR-Personal Proposal

KEY WORDS

User Interface Design, Social Network, Digital Cemetery, Digital Information Heritage

WHAT IS YOUR DESIGN RESEARCH QUESTION ?

No matter how fast the number of active users on social network grows, it will eventually stop growing. Though the growth of dead users is slow, it never stops. This raises the question of whether the social network that stands at the top of netflow today will be the biggest digital cemetery in a few decades.

WHY IS THIS AREA OF DESIGN IMPORTANT TO YOU AND YOUR FUTURE AS A DESIGNER ?

During my undergraduate years, I have participated in design internships in companies such as Alibaba, Bytedance, Himalaya, PricewaterhouseCoopers, etc. After two years of exploration, I decided to work in the UED Department of an Internet company after graduation. The first reason is that I love the corporate culture of China's younger generation. The second reason is that I have a desire for higher wages to earn myself a living in first-tier cities in China. Most UED departments of Internet companies focus on UI design and UX design. In order to adapt to the market trend, I hope to explore the UI design field during my graduation project, so as to enrich the form and content of my portfolio.

WHAT THEMES ARE YOU PLANNING ON EXPLORING ?

What I wanted to explore was a virtual solution. One day in the future, people will make a formal plan to solve the problem of digital information heritage left by deceased people on social networks. This plan will be unknown until the future comes, but obviously it will go through many attempts and explorations, and the virtual solution I want to explore will also be one of them. It will be a question combined of humanity, ethics, morality and technology. At the same time, the call for legislation on digital information heritage is also increasing year by year with the increasing number of deceased people on social networks in the Internet age. Legislation of the Information Legacy Law will one day become another milestone event in the process of human civilization after the beginning of the Internet era and the rise of social platforms. We again, going through the information explosion era, can leave behind our individual memories more simply and independently, like those historic giants, thus enable the generation after generation to think of, find us, and remember us. And then, we won’t have to go through ‘the third death’ said by David Eagleman.

*In David Eagleman's novel Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives says, A man dies three times in his life: the first time is when he dies, he is biologically dead; The second time is when he is buried, people come to his funeral in memory of his life, he is socially dead; The third time is when the last person who remembers him pass away, and then he is really dead.

HOW DO YOU PLAN TO CARRY THIS OUT?

I want to design a virtual online platform, perhaps a web page or a mobile phone app, which can involve the following contents:

1. Collect and organize the contents (such as pictures, videos, forum topics, etc.) published on the main social media accounts used by the deceased people before their death.

2. Establish an encryption system to keep the account names and passwords of deceased people and some other private digital information heritage.

3. Establish a succession relationship between the deceased and the custodian, and to facilitate the proper disposal of digital estates (e.g. public vs private, transfer vs donation, etc.)

4. Provide a place (like a little black box) for each deceased person to tell their life stories to future generations. I believe that every ordinary life is worth cherishing and recording.

WHAT RESEARCH METHODOLOGY WILL YOU USE AND WHY?

Topic divergence method: the method of topic diffusion is to expand the topic suitable for one's own point of view by starting from the perspectives of society, environment, culture, family relations, economy and so on.

Case study method: Case study method has three basic types: individual investigation, group investigation and question investigation. Researchers can choose the right type of research according to their own needs. According to their own identified research objects in a specific object to conduct investigation and analysis, to make clear its characteristics and the main formation process. It is a very practical research method.

Investigation method: the most investigation method is to use historical method, observation method and other methods, through a purposeful, planned and systematic way to collect data, and these data analysis, comparison and induction to reveal the essence of the method. Survey method is a research method to collect data in written form, which can be distributed and mailed to relevant personnel, and then the answers can be recovered and sorted out, and the answers can be statistically and studied.

WHAT IS YOUR TIMELINE?