While it can be a delicate and emotionally-laden topic, new

technological trends compel us to confront a range of

problems and issues about death and bereavement. This

area presents complex challenges and the associated

literature is extensive. In this paper we offer a way of

slicing through several perspectives in the social sciences to

see clearly a set of salient issues related to bereavement.

Following this, we present a theoretical lens to provide a

way of conceptualizing how the HCI community could

begin to approach such issues. We then report field

evidence from 11 in-depth interviews conducted with

bereaved participants and apply the proposed lens to unpack

key emergent problems and tensions. We conclude with a

discussion on how the HCI design space might be

sensitized to better support the social processes that unfold

when bereavement occurs.

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In  Proceedings of CHI 2010

Publisher  Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.
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