69

Are there any common practices for handling the death of a user? How should the claim of a death be verified? How should the deceased user be "visualized" or otherwise indicated on their profile/contributions/etc? Should their profile be disabled or their personal data be removed?

8
  • It seems like an answer to this would be dependent on local cultures. For example, customs in the United States might differ greatly from those in Japan in this regard. I'm not sure that the death of a user should have any effect on user experience. Dec 2, 2012 at 18:43
  • 5
    +1. I have no answers but it's an important question. Have a friend who recently went through some troubles dealing with death of spouse and how difficult it is to wrap up the online entanglements of the deceased.
    – obelia
    Dec 2, 2012 at 18:50
  • True, this isn't an easy question and the answer should depend on many factors. Anyway, this can lead to some misunderstood user experience with such "post mortem" users.
    – m0nhawk
    Dec 2, 2012 at 18:51
  • 4
  • 1
    There is a question on a stack exchange site that shows why implementing such a feature is not unproblematic (webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/28268/…).
    – kontur
    Jan 8, 2013 at 11:23

9 Answers 9

27

It's an interesting question, but not one that has to be dealt with directly.

You should allow people to delete their information / accounts at any time. Passwords can be reset if you have access to an email account, and so as long as loved ones can gain access to the email account, this is not something that you have to deal with directly.

Email access can often be gained with lots of paperwork and proof. Gmail allow this for example. So I would argue that it is better not to try and deal with this yourself.

If you were to choose to deal with it directly, you would come up against a lot of legal issues, such as:

  • getting proof that the person is actually dead
  • determining who you should give the access to (which is normally up to the executor of an estate)
  • liability should you make a mistake

Overall, trying to handle this yourself adds complexity, security concerns, and legal liability. While you would gain very little in return.

Then there is the question of whether it is appropriate. Take this site. If I were to die, should all my content be deleted? I think not. Even if my next of kin think that it should be.

3
  • Hi JohnGB, What do you mean by "dealt with it directly"?
    – edgarator
    Dec 2, 2012 at 23:16
  • @edgarator it is something that is dealt with by the persons email provider directly and so you would only have to deal with it indirectly by providing a way to reset a password with an email address and then delete the account. Both of which you should normally provide.
    – JohnGB
    Dec 3, 2012 at 3:51
  • I wonder what eBay, Amazon, etc do about this? Or Insurance companies for that matter?
    – jlarson
    Jan 11, 2013 at 21:34
15

The only place where I've seen something similar is with Facebook's Memorialization Request where the Memorialization where users themselves need to report the demised providing proof of death (Unless the user becomes a Zombie and acts on his own behalf).

Memorialization Request

This Time Article (dated Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009) says:

(Read: "How to Manage Your Online Life When You're Dead.")

Better publicizing memorialized profiles is an attempt by Facebook to answer lingering privacy concerns. Canadian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart investigated the company in July and issued a report that asked Facebook to explain certain areas of its privacy policy, including policies regarding the profiles of deceased users. In response, the company promised to issue a new privacy policy that better articulates how user information is treated postmortem and offered the commissioner an outline of its memorializing policy, nearly three months before the blog post explained it to users. Spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden says the privacy commissioner was "quite pleased" with Facebook's response to the office's concerns and says the commissioner will review the detailed version of the site's new policy, expected in late October.

On the UX side of things:

However I think the service only works for legal proposes, as I've known a two or three people that have died, but the profiles haven't been memorialized, as if people were not aware of the service, or they don't feel ownership of the issue and do not report it, as it is likely to leave a bad aftertaste.

Not many services portray the sentiment of "profile" as well as facebook does, I don't think that many services would benefit from Memorialization, as they are not as closely attached to the person. I think this would depend on how active the engagement within the community happens in a particular service. Think for example UX.SE even though some of the people in this Q&A know each other due to the constant interaction, Memorializing a profile in this site wouldn't provide any extra value.

It's important to remark that Memorialization might be more important to handle in consumer web 2.0 portals where close personal engagement happens and not in the case of corporate or more cold environments.

9

Two examples from Dutch communities: both Tweakers and Partyflock make it possible for friends or relatives to send and e-mail requesting to memorialize profiles. Both websites request a form of proof, such as an obituary or memorial card, to prevent pranks.

Tweakers and Partyflock both have an index of memorialized profiles. Tweakers adds a ✝ symbol (with date of death tooltip on mouse-over) next to the user name, while Partyflock adjusts the profile with date of death and the ability to post condoleances. As a long time user of Tweakers I can add certain account info (e.g. e-mail address, IM accounts) is hidden, the ability to send private messages to the account is disabled and the user will not be listed on the birthday list anymore. The last one seems obvious enough, but forgetting such details is extremely embarrassing.

There's also a site called Ziggur (which also is from the Netherlands) where users can leave a will regarding their online accounts. Their FAQ says they work with large websites and will also try to contact sites they don't have a partnership with. Ziggur has both free and paid accounts.

4

I will state it this way: a person can die, an avatar (digital representation of a person) can't. A person has two states: alive and death. An avatar / account can be active or inactive or removed.

So a good approach can be to restrict users to show some activity for a given period. This means that if no activity is shown, the avatar becomes inactive and must be explicit activated, or can be explicitly removed.

Main argument is: persons and avatars/accounts are not the same. The relation between the two is respectively 1 - n.

2
  • problem with that is that there can be legitimate reasons for inactivity. Many online communities used to do this (or even terminate accounts after a period of inactivity) but have turned away from the practice after complaints from people returning after months or years (say they're suddenly sent on expat assignments) only to find their avatars/accounts deleted.
    – jwenting
    Apr 16, 2013 at 11:01
  • I see. What I was trying to stress is that you should never delete accounts, let only the owner remove it. Just, deactivate them which is legal due to the inactive period of the accound experienced by the system.
    – Andries
    Apr 17, 2013 at 7:00
3

A great question and undiscovered country for modern generations. I can share my personal user experience. A dear friend of mine recently passed away. Her profile is still active on facebook. I am comforted by it's presence and by the people posting notes and pictures to it. Right now her profile's active state is very healthy for friends and family. No doubt at some point it will become stale and macabre. Also, her husband called me on her cell phone two weeks after she died and I found that disconcerting when I saw her name on the display.

Regardless, in user experience practice, I follow the principle of not playing referee. There is nothing that demands that you HAVE to do anything if a member dies. Just like in the scheduling software I work on, you can book a new appointment in the past. I fought for that to be unrestricted. Happens to be useful.

The facebook policy seems relevant for such a large user base. But in a thriving community, the news will be there for itself. If they are paying users, the bills will stop being paid and the account suspended. Otherwise, a perfectly good user experience process is to do nothing.

1
  • I agree that you have to do anything. The main reason - it is almost impossible to distinguish death of user from the situation when user forgot everything which used to recover his access to his account. So its better to implement 'virtual death' - procedure of deactivating user due to long inactivity. As a minimum such procedure can be 'do nothing'.
    – Serg
    Jan 15, 2013 at 8:44
3

Here's an example of something that works for a particular community. Metafilter chooses to put a note on the deceased person's profile page:

Metafilter example

Metafilter is a very social website where people care personally about each other, and a member suggested this feature. It's a way of honoring the deceased person (and reducing confusion for other people looking at their contributions), and often the note includes a link to a memorial thread about the person.

2

Google seems to use this, called the "Inactive Account Manager".

In short, the user can set dates regarding when they believe being "away" or "passed on" represents in terms of the last sign-in, and as such, take action, whether it be informing acquaintances and family about a situation or passing digital assets to another user.

1

I had the situation of having to use the memorialization feature on Facebook for a friend. I also had to contact LinkedIn to have his profile removed. I had to provide details (online) of friend's passing (obit), dates, and so on. He left no instructions as to how his online presence was to be handled.

Possibly one way to do this is to a) Ask users on sign-up how they would like their presence to be handled in the event of their demise:

  • removal
  • memorialization
  • memorialization with redirect to alternative contact (next of kin etc) or link to obit.

etc.

other possibilities, badging indicating the user has passed away on profile, replacement of their image with an icon indicating user has passed.

I would engage in user research on this.could be interesting cultural aspects to it too.

2
  • I would find it awkward to be asked about this upon signup for a service - to be confronted with my mortality while signing up for a fun new photo sharing tool (for example). I believe this is a sensitive issue where it's best to pick a default that makes sense for your community and then be willing to handle case-by-case requests.
    – britta
    Jan 30, 2013 at 4:03
  • context is all. tone and style can help a lot here. Great presentation from @destraynor on language in UI: speakerdeck.com/u/destraynor/p/the-language-of-interfaces explains it. We're asked about contacts in case of emergency, next of kin, alternatives at times without noticing so context needs to win out: I am sure a pattern for the virtual world would be of value in a pattern library somewhere to help us navigate the problem!
    – uobroin
    Jan 30, 2013 at 8:01
1

This is a bit late answer but...

There are articles released on the subject which use the concept of thanatosensitivity to address the issues caused by the death of a user.

The first paper on the subject is Massimi & Charise - Dying, Death, and Mortality: Towards Thanatosensitivity in HCI.

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.