Exhibited at Dutch Design Week 2025.
Presented at Museum Tot Zover’s Seminar Digitale Dood and exhibited at Waag Hyperlink, Society 5.0 and ThingsCon.
In today’s digital age, our online lives have become extensions of identity.
Digital traces are scattered across platforms, with no established practices for preservation or individual control after death.
At the same time, emerging grief technologies expose fundamental ethical tensions around consent, privacy and data ownership.
What happens to our digital presence when we pass away?
And how might we give people agency over their legacy while supporting the bereaved?
A service system enabling guided curation and authorship of one's digital legacy, giving individuals control over how they'll be remembered while supporting loved ones through new rituals of remembrance.
We designed Echo as a three-part service system: guided curation, tangible preservation and immersive remembrance.
Echo restores agency over digital legacies and creates new rituals of remembrance for a digital age.
Startups are racing to fill the gap with AI that lets you talk to the dead.
The few tools that exist serve the bereaved. The dying have no way to shape their own legacy.
Ritual, object and space carry presence across time.
Experts revealed that authentic remembrance demands consent, emotional readiness and shared rituals.
"Digital remembrance must be curated with consent to preserve dignity."
"Legacies matter when people accept mortality and create shared rituals."
Everyone's digital footprint is different. What matters most varies from person to person.
Photos and videos matter most. Privacy and control are non-negotiable.
We mapped our research around three pillars. Each pointed to a clear design direction.
Address both authorship by the dying and remembrance by the bereaved as one connected journey.
Control over what is shared or deleted must persist after death.
No persona simulation or fabricated memories to safeguard authenticity and dignity.
Combine digital and physical artefacts, independent from platform or third-party control.
Serving two users meant designing a system. Three parts, each with its own values.
We explored widely.
Reverse Brainstorming
Tinder for memories
swipe to keep or delete
Digital hitman
a service that deletes your footprint
Memory roulette
one memory a day, subscribe for more
Brainwriting and Brainstorming
Grief Tamagotchi
feed it one memory a day
Digital Tree
leaves as memories, changes with seasons
Digital Gravestone
your online footprint as inscription
Storyboarding
We framed three questions, one for each part of the system.
Curation
How might we
curate the
memories?
· Journaling prompts
· Social media integration
· Sync music playlists, movies
· Data donation
Storage
How might we preserve the memories?
· Blockchain storage
· Phygital memory box
· Decentralised storage
· Physical urn with data
Experience
How might we visualise and interact with the memories?
· Immersive installation
· Memory puzzles
· Jukebox / View-Master playback
· Interactive bubbles
These references shaped our direction.
Cinema
Paradiso
We remember people through faces and voices. But also through what they loved, what shaped them. That matters just as much.
A locket that can forget
Technology can help us hold on, but it can also help us let go. We wanted to design for healthy grief, not endless attachment.
Tokyo
Toilets
A public space in the city designed for a private act. What if remembering had its own dedicated space, as natural as any other ritual?
One idea emerged. The Last Hug.
Space
Photo booth for visiting memories
Cosy, cocoon-like enclosure
Input
RFID token activates experience
Send a letter or voice note
Experience
Screens: images, videos, movie scenes
Audio: music, voice messages
LED lights: colours from wardrobe or feed
Output
Memory receipt: image, top song, top movie
Memories fade over time
Echo is a service system for creating and sharing digital legacies.
It combines three interconnected parts:
1. The Echo System: a platform for curating your digital legacy
2. The Legacy Key: a physical token to preserve and pass it on
3. The Echo Portal: an immersive space where loved ones experience it
Receives Legacy Key with instructions
Decides to create a digital legacy
User 1: Creator of their digital legacy
User 2: Legacy Key Guardian
Curation of digital legacy
Selects what to save to their Legacy Key
Assigns a Legacy Key Guardian & adds Echo to will
Visits an Echo Portal when ready
Echo
Portal
Echo
System
Legacy
Key
User passes away
Will confirms their role
Requests the Legacy Key
The Echo System
Select what matters from your digital life
A web platform that connects to your social media accounts, guiding you through selecting what to save to your Legacy Key.
The Legacy Key
Store it in a physical token
A tangible token containing your curated memories. It becomes the key that unlocks your legacy for loved ones.
The Echo Portal
Where loved ones experience your story
A physical installation where loved ones use the Legacy Key to experience an immersive experience of your curated story.
Designed for patients in palliative care, the platform connects to their social media, streaming and messaging accounts, letting them choose what to save, what to delete and assign a Legacy Key Guardian.
Echo
System
User 1: Creator of their digital legacy
User 2: Legacy Key Guardian
Home Page
Create your Echo
Home Page
Echo Portal Locations
Add to
Legacy Key
Delete
Profile
Add
Custom Data
Review
Assign
Legacy Key Guardian
User passes away
The survey told us what people want to save. Here, we mapped each platform to the specific data it holds.
Popular
Posts, highlights, reels
Publications, reposts, albums, tagged photos, and videos.
Youtube
Uploaded videos
Snapchat
Memories, saved snaps, and stories.
Tiktok
Uploaded videos
X
Your posts
Career achievements and posts
Threads
Your posts
Music
Spotify
Playlists, liked songs, and listening history.
Apple Music
Playlists and saved tracks.
YouTube Music
Playlists and saved tracks.
SoundCloud
Uploaded tracks, likes.
Movies and Shows
Netflix
Viewing history and My List.
Letterboxd
Watched movies, reviews, and personal lists.
Prime Video
Watch history and watchlist.
Disney+
Watch history and saved content.
Books
Goodreads
Bookshelves, reviews, and reading history.
Amazon Kindle
Highlighted passages, bookmarks, and favourites.
Messages
Saved messages and media exchanges.
iMessage
Shared media
Facebook Messenger
Saved media
Voice Recordings
Voice notes and shared audio.
Google Voice
Saved recordings.
Apple Voice Memos
Voice recordings.
Podcasts
produced content.
Manual Upload
Add Image and Video Files
PNG, JPG, MOV or MP4
(max. 200 mb each)
Add Files
PDF or DOCX
(max. 200 mb each)
Add Audio Files
MP3
(max. 50 mb each)
Others
Steam
Achievements
Google maps
Saved locations
Duolingo
Language levels
We designed a working prototype of the full curation flow. Explore it below, or open the full version here : create your echo
Heading
Sub heading
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Qui velit quasi ut Quis eligendi aut ducimus voluptatem aut pariatur deleniti qui commodi enim et mollitia fugit! Rem voluptatem molestiae non officiis dolores non iusto dolore et pariatur nostrum et expedita aliquid.
Id sint nostrum id repudiandae quasi est quisquam consequatur vel quae beatae eum voluptatibus error non accusantium molestiae ea suscipit obcaecati?
Body
Decorative
H1
Stara - Extra Bold
Stara - Medium
Lato - Regular
Special Elite - Regular
H2
96px
16px
48px
14px
Transient
Nostalgia
Ephemeral
Melancholy
Hope
Connection
Memories need an object to live in.
Digital files disappear into clouds and servers, owned by platforms, forgotten in backups. We wanted the opposite: something you could hold, pass on and keep outside any system.
The Legacy Key is a personalised token containing your curated legacy. Each one is 3D-printed, sealed in a vacuum-formed capsule, with an embedded RFID chip that activates the Echo Portal.
Physical artefacts ground digital memories; framing them as gifts transforms them into tokens of connection. The key becomes a memento mori the guardian carries and eventually passes on.
A space for private remembrance in public life.
The Echo Portal is an immersive installation, minimalistic structures in parks and urban corners. The guardian inserts the Legacy Key. Projection mapping surrounds them with curated memories across four walls. Floor cushions and seating make the space intimate, designed for 2-4 people.
Each team member curated their own digital legacy and created their own immersive experience. Mine explored time and ephemerality, a slow horizontal photo roll inspired by the rhythm of a camera roll. Images alternated between love, family, friends, travel, work, food. Gradually, they faded one by one, symbolising loss while offering a calming mechanism for grief.
Spaces that feel familiar and intimate are embraced. Testing confirmed this: small groups found the experience deeply personal; larger groups reported diminished connection.
What the constraints taught me
Six weeks forced hard choices. The Echo Portal got the team's energy because it was tangible, you could stand in it, feel it. The curation platform became wireframes we never truly refined. Given more time, I'd have spent it there.
What I'd do differently
We couldn't test with actual palliative care patients ethically, we weren't equipped, and that gap still bothers me. The auto-ethnography gave us genuine emotional material, but observing someone navigate this in their final months is a different design challenge. A real product needs embedded research with hospice partners, not just expert interviews.
What stays with me
The constraint that shaped everything: technology should curate, not generate. When we said no to AI recreations, no to chatbots that simulate the dead, we weren't just making ethical choices, we were defining what kind of product Echo could be. That principle now guides how I think about any product that touches personal data.
What I'm still building
I've been prototyping two directions: an infinite canvas that lets you browse your digital life spatially and a daily curation habit that makes
legacy-building ongoing rather than a deathbed task.
A platform strategy that challenges algorithmic models of streaming, combining cultural preservation with digital sustainability to promote conscious consumption.
