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An APP for Death Education
Into the Mist
Overview
Type
Individual Design
Personal Project
UI/UX Design
Time
12/2020, Year 3
Location
Wuxi, China
Tools
Sketchbook, Adobe XD
Overview
This project aims to use design thinking to conduct death education amoung young adults in China, by considering the special cultural environment and the actual needs of people. Into the Mist is an app cooperating with insurance companies, which takes the form of a role-playing game, encouraging users to learn, talk, think about death, and thus live a better life.
INTRODUCTION
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With the development of humanistic education in China these years, an increasing number of scholars have been appealing for death education. However, due to the special cultural environment, the conduction of death education remains almost absent in China, which contributes to a lot of problems.
CAUSE
When asked "Whether you are willing to talk with your children about death"
" have never talked to children about death"
" find it unacceptable to do it"
" consider it harmful to children's mental health"
EFFECT
People, especially young adults
" Feel that life is meaningless and pointless"
" Fear too much about death"
Among those losing their loving ones
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30
70% " loss of sleep and health problems"
30% " have suicidal tendency"
THus
how might we use design thinking to conduct death education in China, by considering the special cultural environment and the actual needs of people?
DESK RESEARCH
Research
So why do Chinese people debard the conduction of death education? By investigating different kinds of attitude towards death in the mainstream Chinese traditional ideological systems, I explored the historical factors leading to the recent situation and tried to find a way to break the taboo from the inside.
We can see that the avoidance of the topic of death is so deeply rooted in Chinese culture that death education remains blocked even in the modern history nowadays. Meanwhile, the absence of death education denies the chance of rebuilding an open communication enviroment of death.
CONFUCIANISM PHILOSOPHY
TAOIST RELIGION
TAOISM PHILOSOPHY
FOLK IDEOLOGY
" If you don't understand
what life is, how will you
understand death."
Guiding people not to think about death.
" All that human seeks
for is to live happily
forever"
Looking for ways to avoid death and gain long life through alchemy.
" Bad luck will be
brought by those
talking about death."
Thinking it ominous to mention the word "death".
" Those who die but
maintain their power
live eternally."
Inspiring people to create more value to make their spirit last after death of body.
Break The loop
What we need to do is to break the loop.From the research above we can find that despite the negative points, there still exists some ideologies favourable to popularize death education.When related to how to live a better life, the topic of death is more acceptable to the Chinse people.
Thus, I decided to guide users to accept death education by emphasizing the relationship between learning about death and living a better life. Driven by the desire for life, users will receive death education through both learning knowledge and talking about death openly, thus explore how the raising awareness of death helps them to live a better life.
user positioning
Despite the fact that systematic death education has not been popularized throughout the country, some products have already begun take a trial at the issue. Varying in their forms and contents, these products are targeted at distinct classes of users. In addition, users of different ages and social groups also vary in their pains and needs for death education. Thus, I conducted investigation on several kinds of the existed death education products and analyzed the characteristics of their targeted users in order to find my own user positioning.
user positioning
According to the research, we can see that the existed death education products consider little about the pains and needs of the confused youth, who are actually in desperate need of it to guide their life( Death cafe and the museums undoubtedly cater to the youth, however they are mainly for those fashion-followers, the art value of which exceeds the practical one).
Thus, I decided to take the confused youth as my targeted users, conveying on their pains, needs and characteristics to design a brand new product for death education for them.
Persona
Research analysis
Channel & Form
From the research, we learn that despite their actual needs for death education in order for a better life, there still exists a weak willingness for users to take it due to several reasons.
In addition, they show an obvious preference for the entertaining things that are fashionable and will make them feel fun and gain awe from their friends.
Therefore, we should find a channel with a high intensity of publicizing to attract more users and an interesting form to strengthen its holds on them.
Contents
We can see that users express needs for both knowledge and a platform to share their feelings with others. Moreover, they also concern about the conduction of death education for the next generation.
Meanwhile, by analysing the negative points in their lifestyle, we can see that some of them are oringinated from lack of death education. Therefore, we should help users to build a link between the awareness of death and a better life style.
Key ideas
“Afraid that death will arrive too early”
"Confused about the meaning of life"
'Fear about the death of their loving ones'
insights
develop a healthy diet and habit of exercise
Live the life to the full before death comes
Spend more time with them and treat them better
design intents
Design an App with an entertaining form and promoted through a broadcasted channel to
Conduct Death education through
Let users learn about the knowledge of death
Guide users to talk about death as a common topic
Guide users to talk about death as a common topic
Raise users' awareness of death, inspire them to reflect about life, and thus
Urge users to develop healthy living habits
Instruct users to live their life to the full
Remind users to treat their family better
IDEation
Ideation
insurance company
Insights
There's no doubt that death insurance functions as one kind of way to reduce the losses because of death, especially those unexpected ones. However, Research shows that there's a weak desire among the public to buy death insurance.The reasons can be seen as follows.
We can see that in order to gain a sales advance in death insurance, what insurance companies need to do might be finding ways to cater to people's needs of dealing with the risk of death before it finaly comes, help people to develop a healthy attitude towards death, and promote their reputation among the public.
New types of insurances
It is lucky for us that during recent years, the insurance companies worldwide has been seeking to develop new kinds of insurance products both appealing to the public and charitably beneficial, which have been bringing great benefits to themselves these years.
Unlike traditional forms of insurance, they are more like "reward systems", which pay to the costumes when they achieved some goals.
Love "Insurance"
Costumes will get 999 roses as a present three years ago if they are still in love at that time.
Golf "Insurance"
Costumes will get a new car as his/her reward if they hit a hole in one on an official golf match.
Fat "Insurance"
Costumes will be paid money for every kilograms they have lost. ( From the film Hello Mr.Billionaire)
In a sense, death education is about how to deal with the risk of death, which essentially corresponds with the intent of death insurance. So why don't we conduct death education through such a death "insurance"?
Stakeholders' map
Thus, I decided to cooperate with insurance companies, design a new kind of death "insurance", through which both conducting death education and bringing benefits both financially and charitably to the insurance company.
BUSINESS MODEL CANVAS
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
As I have said before, due to people's low willing to take death education subjectively, we need to find an amusing and attractive form of the appto stregnthen its hold on the users.
I decided to take the form of a traditional PRG( Role Playing Game), guiding users to take death education from several different aspects, thus gain experience and gold that help them to fight with monsters and earn a bright life for the humanity, which corresponds with the intension of death education: Learn about death, defeat the fear and live a better life.
CONCLUSION
My deaign is the only death education APP that is presented as a death "insurance" and functions in the form of an RPG built into an existed insurance app, for young adults in China who are wondering about how to deal with the risk of death in the special cultural environment where the topic of death is taboo.
information architecture
App Design
WIREFRAME
Interface design
College
Where users get to read passages about death education, learn knowledge, thus gain experince points and gold coins as a reward.
The passages, updated everyday, will cover all aspects of death education, such as medical knowledge , suicide preventation, recommandationof films and literiry works, etc.
Tavern
This module is like a death cafe online, providing users with a platform to talk about anything about death freely.
Weekly Topic
Each week the app will deliver a weekly topic about death, encouraging users to be involved in the chatting to earn more rewards.
Topic Menu
Topics started by users are represented as a menu of the tavern, in which users talk together like a tea party.
Socialization
When users meet with someone they are willing to have a deeper communication, they can follow the one's page and chat privately with each other.
Church
Promote charitable projects pushing for death education for children and guide users how to carry out death education appropriately for the next generation.
Taskbar
Promote projects pushing for death education for children and guide users how to carry out death education appropriately for the next generation.
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Insurance Page
The Map
Search Page
Mainline Tasks
Daily Tasks
Longterm Tasks
Grocery
Using the coins users earned, they can buy equipments here, which will be upgraded with every level up. Moreover, gemstones gained from adventure can be used to buy insurance discounts.
Everyday users will be required to finish the reading of a passsage, participating in chatting or learn about the recent charitable projects.
Encourage users to live a full life, develop healthy living habits and treat their loving ones better to fight with the unavoidable death.
Let users write down their longterm goals and dreams and record the progress they achieve them.
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Player Page
Package
Journey
Manual
Achievements
Relationship
NEXT
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