Obit.
James Blake
Major Studio
Assignment #1
2/4/09
Obituaries as defined are notices of one’s death; in some cases they include a brief biography of the individual whom is now deceased. With people receiving data and absorb its contents much quicker than ever, it is important that this exchange of information is made readily available, and easy for everyone to use. This is the idea that legacy.com has embraced, and I have come up with a few idea’s to help make there website a little more user friendly. Especially since the target demographic would be towards the elderly.
The idea is to create a search engine of sorts that can break down all the mounds of information gathered from multiple different sources and bring forward the ones most prevalent to you, the user, by asking a few simple questions to narrowing the search. Such things like Geography, Name, Sex and birth date would be prime examples of how one would narrow a search down. Since very select few of us reach celebrity status, there needs to be a service that can alert one to the untimely passing of our friends and loved ones.
This engine would have the feature in which if you lived in say a rural community you could receive a weekly email updating you to all the deaths that occurred in the area, with a link to find out more information. For those in the elderly community, this would be an easy way for one to find out about friends, and family members in the community that had passed, that they may have otherwise not been aware of. The engine would also have a feature that could break down a specific demographic how ever large or small and plot it out of a certain range of time. So if you would like to know if more women or men die on Valentines Day you could find out, showing the results from year to year. This would make use of the same operating search engine, used prior to make the site better, and less cluttered.
The design work would be very minimal and lean more towards functionality then artistic vision. After doing some research black and white seem to be the traditional look for a funeral invite, to symbolize a time of grieving and rebirth. Since this website isn’t just a funeral invitation, and for a few it will have recaps of what they accomplished in there lives and some of there personality traits, I feel it is best to go with pastel colors which are generally used to represent the spring time, also generally associated with rebirth.
Some of the precedents I drew upon when formulating this idea was first talking to people who I felt would be primary users of the site. After discussing with my own Grandparents for a bit and getting their input, I checked out the current legacy.com and their competitors. While both are nicely laid out, they both could use improvement. Obit-mag.com only had local celebrities and celebrities listed in it, and there drop down they did offer a easy way to categorize or find your person based off profession which inspired my idea for the new search engine. From there I looked at websites made “in loving memory” as they call them, or memorial sites. Many of which used Spring colors which gave me the idea, that people want to celebrate there loved ones lives, not morn them. Which is why we came up with the color and design choice. Personally I feel the more simple/clean it is the better.
