Gabi Kiryluk
hybrid experience, 2025
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, User Experience Design and Evaluation
contributors:
Zeynep Sude
Leyi Yin
Yuchen Zhai
The design brief was to identify the way the project creates a change in the user/participants, and then to design exclusively online version of this work that preserves or enhances that change.
In the group we focused on the emotional connection that the parade facilitates with the emphasis on the scale of the event, resulting in the prototype of a Digital Cemetery. Later on, I took this concept back to the physical interaction, reshifitng focus on the act of lighting up the candle as a universal way to commemorate those who passed away.
Final Prototype Demonstration
Intended Change in the Participant
Based on these identified changes, we decided to develop an online version of Spit Spreads Death with its focus on raising awareness of pandemics and evoking an emotional connection between participants and the lost ones. We came up with a concept of a Digital Cemetery - a website where people can light a candle for the chosen person, they can learn more about the lost people, and leave flowers and messages for them. It preserves the same format of selecting the lost one by looking at their information and stories.
Critical reflection and individual redesign
Death is a sensitive subject for a lot of people and how we approach it varies across different cultures. Creating a virtual cemetery can be seen by some as disrespectful and flattening the seriousness and profoudness of these spaces. Instead, it may appear as a game due to point and click interaction of lighting up the candles and leaving comments under people’s tombstones. Furthermore, the users are not gathered in the same time and space the same way the Parade did. The Digital Cemetery makes it difficult to evoke emotional connection to those who passed away, further creating additional layer of distance towards the historical event.
Instead, my redesign focuses on the physical action of lighting up a candle as a symbol of hope and a way to remember the dead. The act of lighting up a candle for the loved ones as a way to celebrate, commemorate, pay respect, remember is a universal gesture across different cultures and festives: Diwali, St Lucia, All Saint’s etc. The Memorial Candles mix the meaningful gesture of lighting a candle, with the online space where all the participants gather at one time and space
Design Decisions and UX Theory
Static deterministic interface
This hybrid experience builds on principles of inclusive design, enabling users of various abilities and technical backgrounds to use the product without a trouble. To achieve that, the designed interface is static and deterministic (Rongen, 2025). The flame status is fixed in the top right corner next to the information icon, aligning it with web design conventions. Coupled with minimalistic aesthetics, this layout guides the users to direct their attention to find the status of the flame, or to learn more. The decision to include a pop up information when hovering on different candles aligns with the principle of discoverability in UX Design (Mackamul, 2022), which states that an interface should allow the users to figure out the actions that are possible and how to perform them. These design features increase the inclusivity of the design - the simple interaction and clear layout facilitates easy navigation for users of various abilities. Furthermore, the simplicity of the interface shifts the focus to the physical gesture and one’s own emotions, rather than distracting the users away from the reflective state.
Universal Design
The idea behind the candle holder is that the simple act of lighting up the candle that everyone is familiar with, may activate an online event. It is a very simple mechanism that requires low physical effort and using the online representation of the candle allows to build a mental model of the mechanism - the physical action is mimicked by the interface. These elements feed into universal design of the Memorial Candles.
The decision to use a cloud of candles as the centre point of the interface is informed by interface transparency design idea, circulated by Norman in Design on Everyday Things (2003). “Transparent interface makes it clear what users can do and how they are supposed to do it”. (Bardzel & Bardzel, 2015, p.43). By mirroring the physical candle on the screen, this allows a user to create a mental model of how the system works and they are able to see the system’s state clearly - when the physical candle is lit, the chosen candle on the interface is consequently lit. If one blows the candle, the flame will go off on the interface. To further support the transparency of the system, the interface provides the status of your candle’s flame. This idea also aligns with principles of universal design which state that the system should be simple and intuitive in use, require low physical effort, and should make the information perceptible (Eriksson-Lind & Sjöwall).
Embodied Interaction
Translating an in-person parade into online space loses a lot of the experiential qualities of being together in a shared place and marching together for the same cause. Therefore, Memorial Candles is an online happening - the candles are all lit around the same time, and anyone around the world may participate in the event. A countdown to the event is included. Enacting a gesture of lighting a physical candle brings the users together, introducing an element of embodiment.
Embodied interaction is “one in which a participant relies on the senses to reach a new fidelity of realism, often using motion or gesture as triggers.” (Kel Smith, 2013). The user cannot light the Memorial Candles by a simple click - instead they need to engage in an act of lighting up a physical candle connected to the system. In that sense, the gesture triggers the act of collective remembrance and contributes to the online happening. Providing multiple candle options to select from extends the interaction time. This is based on the Hick’s Law which states that the reaction time increases with the number of equally likely choices (Cho et al.2025). The decision to limit the amount of candles the user can light was informed by the principle of mapping from Classic UX Design (Rongen, 2025). Limiting interaction to selecting just one person the user can light the candle for, it elevates the weight of the gesture and increases the realism of the interaction, delivering an embodied interaction.
Design process
Lovable
#1 Version
The first reiteration of the website revolves around a virtual cemetery offering the ability to interact with the graves (light up the candle, learn about the person, walk between the graves), providing the zoom in and out functionality.
Feedback & Reflections:
- Cemeteries don’t function in all cultures and represent only the western-european traditions
- Death is a very touchy subject - consider how you can make a design more serious
- Consider how to better communicate the scale of the 1918 pandemic
- This design resembles a game resulting in a flattening of the subject matter than the intended design direction
#2 Version
In this version, the design drives away from the idea of a cemetery to refocus on the gesture of lighting a candle - a universal symbol of hope, memory and paying respect to the loved ones.
Feedback & Reflections
- It is difficult to grasp the context of the project - think about a way to learn more about the original idea
- The UI is confusing and could benefit with different layout
Final Prototype
The final prototype includes the candle holder that allows the user to light one chosen candle on the online interface. The design is intuitative, provides immediate feedback and the tone of it is appropriate to the subject matter.
Why it works:
Critical reflection:
References:
Cho, H., Hong, Y., & Kim, W. (2025). HickStudy: Designing a user interface for a Hick's Law-based information processing speed test app. In Adjunct Proceedings of the 38th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST Adjunct '25). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3746058.3758441
Bardzell, J., & Bardzell, S. (2015). Humanistic HCI. Morgan & Claypool. https://doi.org/10.2200/S00664ED1V01Y201508HCI031
Eriksson-Lind, C., & Sjöwall, D. (2025, November 19). UX-design for disabilities [Lecture]. Habilitering & Hälsa, Region Stockholm.
Mackamul, E. (2022). Improving the discoverability of interactions in interactive systems. In Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '22). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3503813
Norman, D. A. (2003). The design of everyday things (First Basic paperback ed.). Basic Books.
Rongen, D. (2025). AI and user experience design [Lecture]. Field.io.
Smith, K. (2013). Designing for tomorrow's digital outcasts. In K. Smith, Digital outcasts: Moving technology forward without leaving people behind (pp. [chapter page range]). Morgan Kaufmann. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-404705-1.00009-1