RAISING THE AWARENESS OF END-OF-LIFE PLANNING
How might we create innovative solutions for last mile of life planning* that is engaging and meaningful especially for people with little intent or awareness of this important topic?
*Last mile of life planning spans from retirement (as determined by financial situation and not the legal retirement age) to after one’s passing.
The objectives of this project were two-fold:
A. Provide students with a real-world design challenge to solve.
B. Provide Immortalize client with prototype solutions that they can implement.
The students were divided into seven diverse teams working on four target user segments:
1. Gen Zs (1995-2015)
2. Millennials (1980-1994)
3. Gen X (1965-1979)
4. Seniors (Born before 1965)
Teams were required to produce outputs that include user personas, user journey maps, their pain points and unmet needs, ideation and iterative prototype solutions.
The ten-week project started with a project kick-off briefing by Immortalize, followed by weeks of desktop research and deep dive interviews of target users, ideation, iterative prototype building and testing. Based on users’ feedback and insights, teams were required to refine or pivot their ideas/prototypes. There were three team presentations with focus on empathy, ideation/initial prototype (week 10 with client) and final prototypes (week 13 with client). Consultations with each team were held every week in the last hour in class. Queries and clarifications with client were conducted via email once a week throughout the duration of this project.
Examples of the innovative prototype solutions produced include:
- living wake/funeral
- after life café
- end of life card game
- interactive quizzes
- AI chatbot on Telegram
"Participation in this SMU-X project was a mind-blowing experience for the team at Immortalize. The students took a very difficult topic, applied logic and creativity, and came up with many innovative and practical ideas that Immortalize adopted to tackle a tough social problem. Special thanks to Professor Wilson who gave the students critical guidance on the approach towards real world problems and helped the students understand and appreciate the difference in problem solving from a startup’s point of view. Thank you Yvonne and Derek for facilitating this amazing collaboration!"
-- Regina Tan, CEO, Immortalize Pte. Ltd.