Jubilee
As a self-initiated project, I wondered what and how can we improve the final goodbye experience for the living ones and those around. Upon user research, it turns into a product that inspires living in the moment through reflecting on one's death in far future. I created a service blueprint on how it could be integrated into the insurance business with a service blueprint.
Jubilee started as a speculative service design project. As space technology is rapidly developing, and companies like SpaceX are constantly making news with their aerospace experiments, we thought why don’t we design a service in space?
The next question is: what do people need or want to do in space? It has to be a special occasion where customers treasure and remember. It could be anniversaries, weddings, and birthdays. What about real problems that are happening now and will evolve into an urgent need in the next decades? As the population grows, we are running out of space. We are at the same time running out of space for cemeteries. This issue is happening worldwide. Research showed England will run out of burial space in the next 20 years, grave space is reused after a couple years in Germany to save space, Hong Kongers are struggling to even find cemeteries to store cremated ashes in urns. What if there is a space funeral service where the deceased could travel in space instead of underground?
As we proceed with our research, we figured out that a space funeral is the cherry on top. What matters more for the users is that they could prepare their own funeral beforehand, so that their farewell won’t be a burden to their loved ones. The project eventually turned into a service design project for funeral planning service.
When we began with service design related to funerals, we did not have sufficient understanding of what the market is offering now, and how people perceived funerals. Therefore, we started our research with secondary research, including competitor analysis, and social listening on forums.
After gaining a basic understanding of how the industry looks and how people perceive funerals, we conducted interviews. To come up with comprehensive interview questions, we drafted a preliminary journey map based on secondary research. The interview questions focus on the interviewees’ previous experience with funerals, how they communicate funeral and death-related topics with their friends and family, and lastly how their ideal imaginary funeral looks and why. We have interviewed 12 interviewees, selected by their psychographics of being not afraid of and open to discussion on funeral and death. In terms of demographics, their age is between mid-20s to 30s.
Following the interviews, data collected is organised with an affinity map to generate insights. With the insights, the user journey map is hence updated with more concise insights. Then the pain points and user stories are synthesized from the journey map.
From our interview, we organised the raw data with an affinity map, and discovered there are two types of interviewees: the “Minimals” and the “Jubilees''. Both personas are similar when it comes to their need to get their last goodbye plan ready beforehand, so there’s less burden to their loved ones when that moment comes. Both lack the opportunity or trigger to discuss the matter, and make their wills clear with their loved ones who will most likely handle their funeral.
The interview data could be divided into 3 types: plan ahead mindset, experience, and execution. Surprisingly, the difference between the Minimals and the Jubilees is actually not that far from each other. Their plan ahead mindset and experience are similar. The major difference lies in execution.
For both the Minimals and the Jubilees, the major motivation for planning their funerals is on the belief of not wanting to be a burden to their loved ones. They would plan ahead because of their care and love for their family and friends. Dealing with the tragedy of them passing away is already too heavy for their families. Organising a funeral should not be another burden.
However, there must be a trigger and under a particular context for them to first start thinking about their funerals. Otherwise, it is extremely difficult to bring it up with their families. The main triggers are getting old and ill unexpectedly. The real possibility of passing away sparks thoughts of their funerals in their mind. TV series and dramas with someone passing away also trigger such thoughts.
When the users start thinking about their funerals, price, environment, minimising misunderstanding, and location are their main concerns:
For funeral experience, the concerns of both the Minimals and Jubilees are very similar. There are two aspects of experience that our users care about: how should the funeral help the participants feel when they attend a funeral, and how does the deceased feel.
How do the participants feel at the funeral?
First of all, the funeral participants should feel relaxed and chilled, instead of heavy-hearted and feeling like a boulder sitting on their chest. Death contains sorrow and pity, but these feelings should not be overwhelming that drag participants down.
Secondly, the participants should feel reassured and relieved. Regrets of being not good enough when the deceased was still alive and worries of the deceased not having a satisfying enough life create self-doubts and guilt. But the interviewees stated that these thoughts are from participants overthinking. So, the funeral should help participants realize that the deceased has had a wonderful and satisfying life. Hence, feeling reassured and relieved.
Thirdly, the funeral should help participants feel connected and included. Funerals are emotional social gatherings. With the pleasant memories of the deceased that participants resonate with, conversations between participants are fostered. Through these conversations, good memories stick in the participants minds, and participants are more likely to remember the legacy the deceased left behind. Therefore, they are connected and supported by one another through the funeral.
Lastly, an ideal funeral should be able to help participants recover sooner. Instead of allowing the sorrow to spread and dragging down their daily lives after joining a funeral, it would be nice if the atmosphere is uplifting.
Firstly, the funeral should be the means that allows their legacy lives on. The values the deceased stand for before his death, and what they have done to defend and build those values should be showcased in their funeral. The participants will then be inspired, possibly inherit their belief, and carry on with their mission. In another sense, keeping the deceased alive by practicing and continuing what the deceased stand for.
Secondly, the funeral should help the deceased feel loved, not loneliness. Passing away alone seems to be inevitable. However, as a last farewell, the funeral is when everyone who cared about the deceased gives blessings, and walks together with the deceased to pass their last miles. By remembering them in their hearts, the deceased forever lives within their loved ones, and “be with” their loved ones for the rest of their lives.
Thirdly, as mentioned in the users’ concern section, the deceased considers their funerals as a freeing and liberating moment. Some of the users think that when they were alive, there were too many limitations. Their death is a starting point for a new exploration, afterlife. Therefore, the funerals and burials should not be an entanglement.
In terms of execution, the difference between the Minimals and Jubilees lies in the style of their ideal funeral.
Both parties would like to deliver the news to their loved ones personally and individually. Only family and close friends shall be invited.
In terms of style, the Minimals prefer minimal rituals, as they believe that gone is gone. What matters more is the achievements they accomplished when they were alive.
As for the Jubilees, they wanted a colorful funeral with a lively vibe. Instead of a dull black and white photo, they prefer a cheerful color photo as the last impression in their funeral. Funeral as a gathering, they would enjoy it if the funeral is held in a party room, where simple catering is offered. Instead of traditional rituals, they prefer interactive mini games in the rundown to bring back the good memories.
The Jubilees are the primary users for the service, while the minimals could have their needs covered by picking up the basic offerings of the service. Then we moved onto mapping out their journey to figure out where are the pain points:
The Jubilees did not have much awareness regarding funerals until they were invited to a funeral. This is when they start talking and discussing such matters with their families and friends. Then, with suspicions, they start searching, and find out it is actually not too difficult to organise their alternative funerals. But how they are going to let their loved ones know their preference is a challenge. It requires a certain context and trigger to share such thoughts without being too blunt and awkward.
Then, another difficulty is that the funeral and burial industry is not transparent with their offering and prices. It takes too much effort and time to find out what services are available, not to mention to compare them.
Moreover, the action of thinking about how their ideal funeral looks inspires them to reflect on how they want to be remembered. It turns into motivation to make better use of the time they are having now to create that legacy. This is the most uplifting and fulfilling step in the journey map.
The rest is when the unfortunate moment finally arrives. Users hoped to notify their loved ones with a personal touch, and have every detail ready so that their relatives do not have to bear more burden, after bearing the heartbreaking news of the “Users” passing away.
To crystalised the significant struggles at each touchpoint, 6 user story cards are synthesized, which can be further converged into 3 main pain points:
Users want to create a context where they could let their families know their preference on their own funeral. At the same time, they want to save up enough to cover their own funeral so it will not be a burden in the future.
Users want to get a comprehensive overview of available services out in the market so they could make a better decision now. If all this information is listed out in one place, it saves a lot of time and effort. Also, their funeral will no longer be a burden for their loved ones, as they have already settled every arrangement themselves when this service is available.
When users think about how they want to be remembered in their funeral, they figure out what’s missing in their life now. As a result, they want to make the most out of their life now, and leave no regret.
How might we help the open-minded organise their ideal funeral in advance?
Tackling each pain point from the user stories:
Especially on life insurance, funeral planning and insurance share a lot of similarities. They are precautionary, which people generally are not anticipating to make the claim. However, it is necessary.Therefore, when managing life insurance policy is an appropriate context for users to bring this up to their family. Also, as a rider add-on embedded in the life insurance policy, users can pay monthly in advance for their funeral.
A comprehensive funeral planning tool is needed to list out a wide range, from traditional to unconventional, of funeral service providers with charges.
As users are planning out their funeral, they must have thought about the legacy they want to leave behind.The process inspires them to realise what they can do more in order to be a step closer to the legacy they wanted to achieve. As insurance companies are sponsoring more events nowadays, our service can suggest events and activities that would help users bridge the gap between now and the legacy.
The primary focus of the ideation process lies on the service blueprint design.
The funeral planning service is embedded into a part of the life insurance offering. The service blueprint would illustrate how it would be incorporated into existing insurance services.
The service blueprint is divided into 5 stages, which are awareness, evaluation, subscription, follow-up, and service realisation.
The user flow focuses on the subscription stage from the service blueprint when users input their preferences.
After registration, there are two main pathways: packaged presets (green) and customised funerals. The packages are mostly for the Minimals and urgent use cases. Users could easily choose their package with filters like budget and availability. Users have less options but decisions could be made fast and easy.
The custom option allows users to decide every detail of their funeral. Users could pick styles they want by creating their own moodboards, then the system would generate suggested color palette and material options. Then, users could decide on the venue, decorations, rundowns, etc. By uploading the guest list, users could draft personalised messages for each guest for the invitation to their final goodbye.
When the details are finalised, the costs would be provided, and could be paid off annually along with the life insurance fee.
The feedback from the low fidelity prototype is that paying a lump sum is not favorable, but paying monthly at a lower price is more acceptable. What users are paying is a safety net when unexpected misfortune happens when I might not be able to tell their loved ones their will. There is still a chance to leave the will properly without out service. So paying a lump sum does not seem worthy.
In addition, the entire planning process seems like a long process, which takes many steps. It’s better if there’s an option for users to save their choices and continue later.
With the above feedback, we made adjustments to the user flow, and came up with the high-fidelity prototype below:
Expert review from the insurance, funeral service, and life education profession will be necessary to validate if the service would embed well in their industries. The storytelling will require more work as well, in order to make the concept more laymen and sounds more worthy to users.
In terms of the next steps taken from the service blueprint, the checklist and rundown for the relatives would be the priority as it is the key deliverable of the entire experience.
Afterall, we are satisfied with the end result, considering we only had two weeks for the design. We’ll continue exploring more possibilities in the future to consolidate the service idea.
