An Online Memorial for Coping with Mass Shooting Tragedy by Combining Participatory Memory with Participatory Design of AI Use Cases
Jonathan Chan, Douglas Zytko · 2022
Mass shootings occur in America at an alarming rate. There is opportunity to intervene in this problem by designing technologies that support affected communities in processing gun violence tragedy. In this paper we report on the design of an online memorial for a mass shooting that affected our university’s local community. We demonstrate an alternative approach to online memorials that blends participatory memory with participatory design through remembrance artifacts that represent ideas for gun violence prevention technologies that could have prevented the tragedy and that may prevent future tragedies. We demonstrate participatory memory + design with our memorial called the OUrchive that supports retrospective and prospective reflection on the Oxford High School shooting through designing new use cases for AI to prevent mass shootings. Early community involvement suggests that the OUrchive supports personal reconciliation with tragedy by channeling trauma towards public discourse about potential solutions to gun violence.