User design study and survey for a novel ecological marine alternative to funerals and cremation

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Resting Reef is a memorial and eco-burial service that regenerates life in people's afterlives and radically changes how we see and experience one of the most traumatic events in our lifetime - death. We do this by building artificial reef structures with a formula containing human ashes and crushed oyster shells, two elements that nourish and promote marine growth. Resting Reef provides legacies that restore nature for the next generations to come by increasing marine biodiversity, filtering water, preventing coastal erosion, and capturing CO2\. Each individual memorial will be a reef structure that can be combined to create entire artificial reef cemeteries to boost natural oyster reefs, which have decreased by 85 percent due to human activities. This makes them one of the world's most threatened bio-diverse habitats. Traditional burials require large amounts of land, embalming fluids that find their way into the groundwater, and materials with intense emissions like steel and concrete. Each cremation releases 400 kilograms of CO2 into the atmosphere for each funeral. Resting Reef, as a solution to this, promotes marine growth with the regeneration of approximately 100 oysters per reef which equals a positive impact of 7 million litres of water filtered every year (Beck et al., 2011). By promoting the growth of oysters, seagrass will grow in the area, and fish will flourish. It also prevents billions of pounds of erosion damage to coastal communities (Stokes el al., 2012). We aim to revolutionise the way funeral services are delivered, creating an experience that accompanies customers throughout their whole grief process, providing aftercare services that guide and support them in navigating one of the most traumatic experiences in life. We want to develop beautiful sites where people can visit their loved ones, connect with nature, and witness the restoration efforts from land or through live footage (i.e. diver or ROV). The sites will also be available for locals who wish to visit and learn more about how the reef serves their coast. At present, Resting Reef has a defined process for converting a person's ashes into reef structures. However, the team does not yet have a method defined for how the loved ones will interact, design and order the reef structures. This project is focused on a design study to understand how different age, social, cultural and ethnic groups are likely to specify and order the reef structures to honour their final wishes.