There’s no easy way to prepare yourself nor the people around you for terrible loss. This is a sensitive subject and nothing can be compared to losing a loved one. Grief and sadness are present and it’s sometimes terribly hard to cope.
But can there be a way to ease the grief? Or accept sadness differently?
Yes, there is. And like many other projects and initiatives that deal with human emotions, this one was also born from personal experience.
The idea for Aura, a collaborative platform that provides a place for emotional and practical support, started as a personal need of a man who was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, sadly, a terminal illness.
So, instead of giving all up, Paul Jameson chose to leave a mark and share with others what he found helpful for him.
Why a collaborative platform?
From one of his blog posts, Jameson said that the biggest obstacle he faced from that moment was how hard it will be to bring up these difficult topics to his family. But, also to find the right moment to approach these questions with everyone around him.
He started asking certain questions. : Am I prepared for death from a practical and emotional perspective? Have I said everything I want to those that I love? Do those closest to me know what I want to happen after I die, such as my funeral wishes? How will people remember me?
He was triggered to dig more into the area of death only to discover that there are more people struggling with the same situation.
At the same time, he didn’t feel like social media was the perfect place for him to leave his legacy behind. Instead, the idea for Aura as a collaborative platform came up.
Unusual as it may sound, he envisioned Aura as a place to celebrate life and manage death. In other words, Jameson wanted to create a tool that will recreate the dialogue around death and become a movement for change.
Aura is a collaborative platform where everyone can find a new way to make difficult moments easier to bear.
Through facilitating conversations, leaving wishes, and practical information, individuals can use Aura to create a safe place for their legacy and a memory lane for their families.
Eventhough the platform is still in a development phase, users can now visit Aura’s website and get to discover many soon-to-be-available tools.
They can also visit Articles and Blog sections with a list of many useful articles and guides regarding life and managing death.
Design that soothe and inform
The core idea of the design for this project is to focus on user emotions and needs.
With the design, we have created a soothing but useful user journey that invites visitors to discover more about the subject of managing the end of life.
We designed the logo guided by the idea of the Aura’s essential mission – to keep memories alive. We decided to use a simple infinity symbol gently integrated into letters that at the same time creates a floating aura.
The infinity symbol in this case strongly suggests that everything on Aura is meant to be preserved and cherished long after someone is gone.
Moreover, as Aura has a specific target audience, our approach to branding and visuals was to use spiritual and warm colors. We wanted to create a user-friendly and calm user interface that will clearly respond to users’ needs.
The combination of purple, blue and white was our choice to enhance the spiritual and completely safe and friendly space that supports and invites users to action.
Personal story – a collaborative feature to leave memories and inspirative stories to families
When someone passes away, unfortunately, it is all too common that many of the memories of its life are gone forever. But this doesn’t have to happen. There are many ways for those who are leaving forever to ensure that the memory of them keeps living.
Life Story feature provides a user with a digital place for leaving his or her life stories and desirable inspirative legacy so they can never be forgotten.
Before leaving, one can use this feature to add for keeping some of his digital possessions. Anything that reflects the best moments of its life. There are also options to add images and text or to upload a video that will tell the personal story.
Such moments can be left for families and loved ones to be revisited any time they desire.
Users can curate and highlight any moments of their life that can later be shared with their family and friends. As Aura is a collaborative platform, even after the one leaves forever, families can continue to share more images to keep the remembrances alive.
Messages – a tool to leave heartfelt notes to loved ones
Saying goodbye has never been easy, saying goodbye forever is unimaginable. Once people were writing letters, scheduled for sending in the future. Mostly to say all the things they never said before or to provide consolation for their loved ones. Instead of letters, today one can use digital messages and schedule when they will be sent to a specific person. One can use many ways to say a farewell and it doesn’t have to be hard anymore.
Messages feature invites users to say to their loved ones everything that they never said before. In other words, this Aura’s feature schedules messages for sending before and after someone’s death.
Users can prepare their messages in advance and choose the time when they should be sent in the future. Messaging also works the other way around. People can send a message to the profile of a person who has passed away.
It is even harder to deal with the regret of not saying anything. Therefore, Aura allows users to avoid regrets if they didn’t tell someone how much they meant to them.
Practical Information – ensure the most important information for your loved one.
Families are unaware of last wishes most of the time. The case is that they remain stored physically with no one to find them. Aura’s Practical Information feature allows users to prepare all the information for the things to be done after they die.
Users can add details of their will, last wishes for the funeral, and other important information for their families. Everything they leave remains highly protected and stored on Aura.
Families can later get access to such information and follow the instructions. All to avoid the unnecessary stress in organizing everything while they face the loss.
Before features are complete, follow Aura’s blog and articles
Planning the end of life is not what anyone has on its mind. From funeral arrangements to finding an attorney, it can be frustrating even impossible considering different health conditions.
Leaving peacefully and relieved is a luxury for most of the people, and Aura tends to change that.
Until the full platform is live, Aura is still there to provide answers for those uncertain about many things such as writing the will or finding proper medical care.
Users can find useful information and complete guides on how to arrange a funeral, contact a proper attorney, or where to seek emotional support.
The goal of the blog and articles is to help users remove the worry and distress about dying both for them and their families. The founder of the Aura also shares its personal final journey by writing the blog posts regarding the matter.
The full launch of the Aura collaborative platform is due later this year
At the moment, our development and design team work around the clock making sure Aura arrives on time.
We are proud that we have the privilege to contribute to Aura’s mission and shed a light on one of a kind disruptive collaborative platform that aims to change how we perceive and deal with death and loss.
We have a unique chance to provide tools that like no other help in managing the end of life and losing the loved one.
In the meantime, we invite you to stay up to date with the latest Aura news and updates on the platform launch. Register and be one of the first in the world to test the Aura platform.
Want to find out more about our other projects, such as the healthcare IT solution MyWorkMode or our elearning for health solutions? Read more about our work on our Projects category on the blog.
