1.
Personal Digital Archives and the Death Transition<br />Evan Carroll<br />The Digital Beyond<br />

2.
About Me<br />Author of Your Digital Afterlife<br />Author and editor at TheDigitalBeyond.com<br />UX Designer by trade<br />

3.
Identity Preservation<br />Objects are passed to heirs as an act of identity preservation.<br />Objects are often imbued with meaning.<br />The story<br />Why it’s important<br />Unruh (1983) Price, Arnould, & Curasi (2000)<br />

4.
Shift to Digital<br />

5.
Issues<br />Awareness<br />Access<br />Ownership<br />Preservation<br />And countless others<br />

6.
Meaning<br />How can we imbue digital objects with meaning? <br />How can we design personal archives so that a lifetime of digital content can be accessible and meaningful to future generations?<br />

7.

8.
Value<br />Value is relative, changing from person to person and time to time.<br />Value is extracted from more than just the content. Sometimes you need the story behind the object to appreciate it.<br />

9.
How Do We…<br />Ease the transition from the creator to new curators?<br />Honor and respect the wishes of the deceased?<br />Maintain the personal value of the collection?<br />

10.
Design Principles<br />Ensure awareness and access<br />Wishes of the deceased<br />Communicate personal value<br />Tackle quantity<br />Provide communal experience.<br />

11.
Awareness and Access<br />It’s not always easy to find digital objects.<br />Heirs are necessarily sophisticated technology users.<br />PDA systems should provide a means of awareness and access.<br />

12.
Wishes<br />How can we record and enforce the wishes of the deceased?<br />Family members and other “trusted” caretakers often have other ideas.<br />

13.
Communicate Value<br />Why did the creator believe this object was important?<br />We already have some metadata, but how can we passively capture meaning?<br />

14.
Tackle Quantity<br />Will caretakers of personal archives be overwhelmed by quantity?<br />One important object is often as valuable 10,000 objects.<br />

15.
Communal Experience<br />Digital objects move us away from experiencing them together in person.<br />Can we attach comments and other conversations to our digital objects?<br />

16.
Thanks<br />Evan Carroll<br />evan@thedigitalbeyond.com<br />@evancarroll<br />