Afterglow supports pet bereavement without emotional obligation
Afterglow: A Place-Based Memorial Ecology for AI-Mediated Pet Bereavement
Human-Computer Interaction
Summary
Many people feel sad after losing a pet, but social support for grieving pets is limited. The authors created Afterglow, a mobile app that helps people remember their pets by sharing private memories and receiving symbolic messages from the pet’s perspective. The app aims to keep the bond alive while avoiding pressure to keep interacting or feeling obligated. Through surveys and discussions, the authors refined the design to balance comfort with respecting users’ emotional boundaries.
What this means in practice
- •For mobile app developers: Create pet memorial apps that use AI to maintain connections without pressuring users to continue interaction.
- •For digital wellbeing teams: Design supportive applications that balance remembrance and emotional boundaries for users coping with loss.
Authors
Hanjing Shi, Dominic DiFranzo
Abstract
Pet bereavement often receives little social recognition. Generative AI can give a continuing bond a responsive voice, but a comforting reply may also claim authority to forgive or request attention. We investigate how a memorial can support connection without turning remembrance into obligation. Through Research through Design, we developed Afterglow, a mobile world connecting private remembrance, human witnessing, and symbolic Pet messages. A formative survey (N=57) informed the initial design, followed by six online roundtable walkthroughs with 20 unique participants across two prototype iterations. Our interpretive analysis develops tensions between returnable connection and emotional obligation, recognizable likeness and ontological clarity, and protective intervention and surveillant authority. We contribute Legible Restraint, a cross-layer requirement that limits on relational authority survive changes in speaker, generation context, trigger logic, data use, and participation. Its temporal consequence, Designing for Goodbye, keeps remembrance available without making continued use a condition of care.