People research report

The outcome of this work is clearly dependent on a process.

It is not an experiment. It is not a fiction. It does not exist between a tester and a user. It is a cut and paste exchange of a recent personal communication


‘Just want to say I'm with you. If you want to talk, give me a sign. I'll call you.’


My Dearest Winnie,

Sorry it took me so long to reply your message. You're truly an angel and I thank you deeply for your support. Things have been intensive and I am both mentally and physically exhausted from going back and forth to the hospital and at the same time worry about my work in school. I haven't been this stressful in my life. Fortunately my mother is doing well and she is stable. The nurses and doctors are great and they are supportive. All of them claimed my mother as a tough woman and she is going to make it through. It is great to see my mother being able to open her eyes and communicate via pen and paper. She regains her strength as day goes by. She is going to undergo an operation tonight to close up her wound. it is a small operation and things are going to be great. I am beginning to feel much more hopeful everyday passes and I am very thankful that the family all came together in this time of crisis. I really wish you could be here with me. You're first person I thought of when things with mom was turning to the worst. I am sorry to hear that your bf is in the hospital. I hope he is doing well. Please give him my regards. Hows your studying going? Most importantly how are you? These are stressful times and I hope you are taking good care of yourself. That is it for now. Unfortunately I still have many other things to do and Uncle John is nagging me for the computer to check his email....=P

Anyways, I will talk to you later. =]
Miss you & Love you~


XOXOXOMicky a.k.a. Small Small




Support – An example is only ever an example, but this one organically supported the ideas I was working through and emphasizes how important support and love are to the duress of death, in its approach, happening and survival. Love can here be compared with medication. It is a crucial ingredient to well being while trying to comprehend such an emotionally charged and ambiguous universal process.






The internet post of Turkish


Hello, everybody…

I wasn’t quite sure where to post this, so I decide to post it here. Half a year ago I lost my father due to stroke. The real pain here is that he was thought to recover from it, and my family and I were enthusiastic about his return from the hospital as he was getting better. So, two days before his scheduled return home, he suddenly passed away… But the horror did not end here; two weeks after the funeral, me and my mom returned home from the cemetery only to see that my older brother has shot himself…

I am not really the communicative type and it is pretty hard for me to squeeze these lines out. But I am having problems living a normal life after these incidents: I am full of anger and hatred, relying on alcohol for relief more and more often. You know, these deaths really made me realize how ingnorant people are because some of them would even stop talking to me as if I have ‘the touch of death’ or something, or would say some senseless BS like ‘it is fate’ or ‘you have to remain tough’… It is clear to me that they have nothing quite like this in their prefect little lives and really have no idea what they are talking about, so I decided to post here. Besides the only person I can talk it over with is my mother, but I prefer not to because she probably feels way worse than me.

The thing is that I have real trouble getting it together, it is hard for me to get up in the morning, it seems impossible for me to get a job because I am overly aggressive, and I have a problem with communicating to people because I am no longer the same me. So if anyone had a similar situation, or would have some suggestions on how to get one’s life back on track after something like this, I will greately appreciate it.

Turkish.

Digital Communication with Strangers...

Online bereavement support, memorial web sites becomes the more than more popular and fast growing phenomena. This new way of sharing is a reaction against the lack of understanding about death and bereavement in our days.

As death is considered as a taboo and grief becomes a private affair. The bereaved person often feels lonely and lost, besides the pain caused by the lost of the loved one, the bereaved often feels isolated and misunderstood by his entourage.


To answer this need to grief, it pushes the bereaved to seek comfort and help from strangers, usually those who went through the same kind of experience through the digital world.

This kind of new attitude seems to be a natural outcome of our today’s society.
But it is not enough.

My project intends to create a new perspective of our ‘traditional’ way of mourning -

I believe design can be used as a platform/ tool/ support to share emotions between the bereaved (private) and his entourage (public/ interaction) during this transition period with a transitional object/ system and create an awareness of death and bereavement with a positive insight.