Final backup: Stylish designs for digital urns

Did you know, for example, that you can add an estate contact on your iPhone who can access the data in your Apple account after your death? I only realised this when I was working on the bachelor's degree project "Final_Backup" by Swiss industrial designers Jonatan Bischof and Elias Diehl and consciously engaged with my digital heritage.

Voice messages, Instagram posts and Spotify playlists are increasingly replacing traditional media and leaving behind digital traces that remain online after death. So far, there is no regulated legal handling of this data. And it remains unclear who gets access and which digital heirlooms should be bequeathed if you don't use functions like the iPhone. That's why the duo have developed a hypothetical data protection system that makes the grey area clearer.

The process allows you to decide what should happen to your digital legacy. It is used to transfer your data to physical urns. This frees electronic devices from data and allows them to be reused.

"In Switzerland, around 196 people die every day, leaving behind an average of three mobile devices," explains Jonatan Bischof. This leaves over 200,000 devices behind every year, which often end up unused in drawers. The duo believes that these devices could be recycled because they contain valuable materials.

A beautiful storage space: 7 digital urns for every taste

All the urns differ in terms of storage capacity, durability and access rights. Their design is inspired by contemporary objects and ceremonies surrounding death in our society. The "Water Memoria" digital urn is biodegradable and deletes all digital data as soon as it comes into contact with water. "Forever Gone" pursues a similar goal. It is a brooch made of wax and is buried with the deceased person. This process completely erases all data.

The counterpart to "Forever Gone" is "Forever Alive". This digital urn is placed in ice, kept cool and could be kept for up to 1000 years. Gravestone 2.0" also keeps the data ready in case someone wants to access it one day. The urn is part of a gravestone. "This allows relatives to access digital data on the deceased and reminisce digitally," says Elias Diehl.

With the design of the digital urns, the Bischof/Diehl duo wants to give more weight to the digital legacy. On the other hand, they want to translate the question of what should happen to our digital footprints after our death into an object and encourage discussion.

In a survey, visitors to the exhibition can indicate which data they wish to bequeath and how. Initial survey results show that the digital urn "Forever Alive" would be particularly popular. According to the survey, the majority of participants are not prepared to bequeath Google search histories. On the other hand, most want to pass on their digital traces such as photos and top ten favourite songs - purely hypothetically, of course.

Although the project is purely speculative, it has made me think and take a first concrete step: I have now added an estate contact for my Apple ID.