{"682262":{"#nid":"682262","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Commemoration Platform Lets You Determine How You\u0027re Remembered Online","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EOn Halloween night in 2022, more than 100,000 people flooded the streets of Seoul, South Korea, to celebrate and participate in the city\u2019s festivities. Thousands funneled into a 14-foot-wide alley in the Itaewon district from multiple directions.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe crowd grew so large that no one could move in the alley, resulting in the deadliest crowd crush in the nation\u2019s history. Nearly 160 people were killed, and another 196 were injured.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ESoonho\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cstrong\u003EKwon\u003C\/strong\u003E, a first-year human-centered computing Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, lived within walking distance of the alley when the incident occurred.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt was tragic,\u201d Kwon said. \u201cIt really makes you think about how life is fragile. Everyone in my community talked about what it would have been like if they were in that alleyway.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EMany of the victims were young people \u2014 some of them teens who had no identification on them. Kwon thought about their family members being told their loved ones\u2019 lives had been cut short. He wondered what memories those families would have of the deceased.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe incident inspired Kwon to create a new mobile platform that helps young adults and career professionals create a post-death memorial for their families. The platform, which Kwon and his research collaborators named \u003Cem\u003ETimeless\u003C\/em\u003E, allows users to be remembered how they want to be remembered in the event of their untimely death.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cMost death preparation services are for terminally ill patients or aging adults, focusing on will management or funeral planning,\u201d Kwon said. \u201cWe thought such needs may differ for young adults and asked how we could design a system that better caters to their needs.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003ETimeless\u003C\/em\u003E is a photo-based death preparation system that enables users to send a physical package containing pre-curated pictures, voice recordings, and letters to a designated recipient in the event of their passing.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe system syncs with a user\u2019s mobile photo album and creates a list of scanned faces. Users can select a face and view all the photos they\u2019ve taken with that person. They can choose which photos they want sent to that person after death and write individual messages for each image.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOnce the user\u2019s death has been reported, \u003Cem\u003ETimeless\u003C\/em\u003E sends a package to each selected individual with printed photos, letters, and a QR code or a CD that contains videos or voice recordings.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBreaking the Ice\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKwon and his collaborators designed \u003Cem\u003ETimeless\u003C\/em\u003E based on a group study that asked participants to imagine what would happen if they unexpectedly died. The participants were asked what was on their bucket lists, their epitaphs, and what they would wish for if they could make one wish come true.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSurprisingly, people were happy to participate because we framed it in a way that wasn\u2019t gloomy,\u201d Kwon said. \u201cMany shared that reflecting on their death motivated them to actively express their love and be grateful for what they have. Turning something as heavy as death into something positive was a key design implication.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EDigital vs. Physical\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKwon began his research career examining virtual commemoration systems, including Facebook and Instagram commemoration pages, during the Covid-19 pandemic and exploring how technology can meaningfully memorialize the deceased.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe said two aspects distinguish \u003Cem\u003ETimeless\u003C\/em\u003E from other commemoration platforms:\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cul\u003E\u003Cli\u003EThe deceased can decide how and by whom they want to be remembered.\u003C\/li\u003E\u003Cli\u003EThe fusion of digital memorialization with physical memorialization\u003C\/li\u003E\u003C\/ul\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cLeveraging only the digital side of it can be superficial,\u201d Kwon said. \u201cWe build monuments, statues, and tombstones because the notion of death itself is losing your physical presence. By making it physical, we aimed to connect the discussion on digital legacies to traditional human commemoration forms.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAI Afterlife\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKwon also said he is aware of artificial intelligence (AI) afterlife. This emerging technology allows people to train an AI agent and produce digital avatars with which family and friends can communicate after they die.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EMeredith\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cstrong\u003ERingel\u003C\/strong\u003E \u003Cstrong\u003EMorris\u003C\/strong\u003E, director and principal scientist for human-AI interaction at Google DeepMind, spoke about AI afterlife in October during the Summit on AI, Responsible Computing, and Society hosted by Georgia Tech\u2019s School of Interactive Computing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn her talk, Morris spoke about the criticism AI afterlife is already facing for causing people to experience extended grief and the inability to move on from losing a loved one.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKwon said another drawback is that AI agents are susceptible to hallucinations and could say untrue things about the deceased.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cHow can you say for sure that the representation of AI is me?\u201d he said. \u201cAs researchers, our role is to explore and critically examine how the emergence of such technology may shape society while striving to ensure its development benefits people.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKwon sees \u003Cem\u003ETimeless\u003C\/em\u003E as a catalyst for meaningful discussions about how a digital legacy curation system may accurately reflect a user\u2019s wishes before death.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHe will present a paper on \u003Cem\u003ETimeless\u003C\/em\u003E\u0027s design process and its implications at the 2025 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) this week in Yokohama, Japan.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn the wake of the 2022 Itaewon crowd crush, Georgia Tech Ph.D. student Soonho Kwon created a mobile app called \u0022Timeless\u0022 to help young people control how they are remembered after death.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EKwon\u2019s goal is to empower users to shape their digital legacies and offer meaningful comfort to those they leave behind.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Tech Ph.D. student Soonho Kwon has developed a mobile platform that allows users to curate and send personalized photo-based memorial packages\u2014complete with images, voice recordings, and letters\u2014to loved ones after their death, aiming to g"}],"uid":"36530","created_gmt":"2025-05-06 18:35:35","changed_gmt":"2025-05-06 18:42:55","author":"Nathan Deen","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2025-04-28T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2025-04-28T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"677034":{"id":"677034","type":"image","title":"IMG_3277_adjusted.jpg","body":"\u003Cp\u003ESoonho Kwon is one of the developers of Timeless, a mobile platform that creates personalized memorial packages\u2014including curated photos, voice recordings, and letters\u2014to be sent to loved ones after their death. Photo by Nathan Deen\/College of Computing.\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1746556558","gmt_created":"2025-05-06 18:35:58","changed":"1746556558","gmt_changed":"2025-05-06 18:35:58","alt":"Soonho Kwon","file":{"fid":"260894","name":"IMG_3277_adjusted.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/05\/06\/IMG_3277_adjusted.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/05\/06\/IMG_3277_adjusted.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":7837532,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/05\/06\/IMG_3277_adjusted.jpg?itok=AWJm17X1"}}},"media_ids":["677034"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"50876","name":"School of Interactive Computing"}],"categories":[{"id":"42901","name":"Community"},{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"194248","name":"International Education"},{"id":"134","name":"Student and Faculty"},{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"9153","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"},{"id":"173212","name":"Human-Computer Intraction"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}