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Everglow is a service that lets people create a legacy of the loved ones they've lost.
It is remembrance. It is afterlife. It is nostalgia. It is magic.
1. The Brief
The brief of the course was based on a 'Black Mirror' episode and come up with a light version of the service depicted in it. The course put focus on storytelling to build the service experience, as well as utilize is as a tool for pitching and presentation.
2. The Process
We had to do the service analysis, emotional analysis and mood analysis of the Black Mirror episode to deconstruct the running themes that emerged strongest for us. The running theme of the episode and service was on death. We were provided with tools to put down our thoughts and reflections to build our story. This was followed by a case study analysis wherein we looked at projects that talked about death from different perspectives. The subthemes that we focused on was reflections on loss and remembrance. Following is the synthesized service promise:
3. The Concept
We wanted the service to become a part of people’s rituals. We focused on eliminating the aspect of fear that comes with death by making the memories of a person eternal, and simultaneously giving people a space where they could collectively share memories of the departed loved one. To be effective, the con - tents and interactions of the service had to be simple but engaging, seamlessly integrating in people’s life without becoming addictive. We envisioned the space to be global in its presence, a welcoming public space for remembering your love ones.
We framed a moodboard that depicted how we wanted our service to look and feel, as well as the motions it would trigger. We established that the service entry should feel like a portal - a transcendence into a different dimension.
HMW make the experience of carrying out procedural work seamless for international students?
4. The First Story
It was essential for us to give the service a definite experiential flow. We built a compelling story narrative that involved four key personas. We developed the story of our character Debbie Swing who was a dancer but had to quit post getting pregnant with Rob. The narrative follows the structure of a drama wherein Debbie suddenly dies, and thus comes in the us - age of our service. The service is created by Rob and added on to it by Flynn (Debbie’s best friend), but we chose Paola as the protagonist who will use the service to touch the core of the concept. Even though Paola isn’t directly related to Debbie, she was greatly inspired by her. The fact that she doesn’t know much about Debbie and did not spend much time with her, the service is a great way for her to get to know Debbie more holistically.
Failure: While doing an internal prototyping and role playing sessions of the service, we realized that the story and narrative was not effective at all. As creators, we ourselves weren't able to empathize with the story and did not feel any emotions that we wanted to evoke.
Spark: It was in that moment I realized that we needed a true story and narration to make our concept and service work. I had lost my grandfather while doing this particular project, and thought of it as a perfect opportunity to pay tribute to him knowing that my family would love to contribute in building my grandfather's legacy.
5. The Final Story & KC's Legacy
My family was extremely responsive and supportive. We were overwhelmed by all the photos, audios, stories they sent us and the commitment they showed during this process. The next step was to organize the prototyping session in detail: we kept a structure similar to the one used in the roleplay session because the major change was involving real experiences, and nothing else that was very significant. The sessions introduced the service to the participants through a teaser video, and a legacy booth we had prototyped on Miro. We ran the activity with a participant who shared no relationship with me and my family, and one with a member of my family to understand the feelings the experience evoked in them, if any.
6. Reflections
We had the chance to approach a very delicate theme, which forced us to explore our own selves in depth: loss is not something you necessarily discuss with anyone and the development of the project pushed us to approach the theme and share our views with others, putting ourselves in each other’s shoes and exploring different ways of dealing with grief. Having shared this process has created something that connected each of us in an unusual way, getting to share parts of our lives and painful experiences that we usually don’t share in a university course
7. Outcomes
Let's collaborate, say hi.
The Team
Chiara, Daniela, Amarinder
Marco, Martina, Nicola
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