Abstract
Emerging grief technologies promise to preserve the dead through data, yet often neglect the relational, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of memory and identity. This paper proposes a care-centred framework for digital legacy design, grounded in the speculative concept of A Living Will, which uses augmented reality to enable co-created posthumous memories between the living and the deceased. Through autoethnography, participatory workshops, and theoretical analysis, the study critically examines how care ethics and co-authorship can transform digital legacy from an act of preservation to one of participation. By treating identity as distributed and legacy as relational, we reframe grief technology as a site of relational responsibility rather than as a form of simulation by cultivating ongoing, situated relationships with the dead. The contribution positions care not as sentiment but as method, showing how speculative design can enact care through ambiguity, consent, and embodied remembering.
Keywords
Design with Care, Digital Legacy, Speculative Design, Care Ethics, Relational Technology, Posthumous Agency
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1527
Citation
Bilić, S., and Sorenson, J. (2026) Crafting Legacies with Care: Speculative Frameworks for the Digital Afterlife, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1527
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Crafting Legacies with Care: Speculative Frameworks for the Digital Afterlife
Emerging grief technologies promise to preserve the dead through data, yet often neglect the relational, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of memory and identity. This paper proposes a care-centred framework for digital legacy design, grounded in the speculative concept of A Living Will, which uses augmented reality to enable co-created posthumous memories between the living and the deceased. Through autoethnography, participatory workshops, and theoretical analysis, the study critically examines how care ethics and co-authorship can transform digital legacy from an act of preservation to one of participation. By treating identity as distributed and legacy as relational, we reframe grief technology as a site of relational responsibility rather than as a form of simulation by cultivating ongoing, situated relationships with the dead. The contribution positions care not as sentiment but as method, showing how speculative design can enact care through ambiguity, consent, and embodied remembering.