Handling Death Gracefully in Digital Experiences

The last few years have been difficult.

My father had a stroke that left him with a tracheostomy and bedridden. In April 2020, we took him into our home. We were his primary caregivers, nurses, and respiratory therapists until he passed last October.

Shortly after my father’s death, our fifteen-year-old dog got worse. He became incontinent. His back legs were so weak that we’d often find him unable to get back on his feet. We said goodbye to him last week.

So we’ve been dealing with our fair share of loss lately. And to make matters worse, we’ve encountered applications that handle death poorly and add to our pain.

My sister organized a lovely and touching celebration of life for our father. She rented a space that had a rustic feel. It would have felt familiar to our father who grew up in Southern Oregon.

Because we weren’t hosting it at a funeral home, the task of sending the invitations fell to my sister. She crafted an invitation on Evite.

Things went awry when my sister sent the invitation.

Exciting news Jason! Your dad died.

My sister was aghast. There was no preview of the text that Evite was going to send. We sent a quick apology to guests. And I swore never to trust Evite again.

Our dogs rarely get out of our yard, but when they do, it is tramautic. As our older dog Primo’s hearing started failing, we worried that if he got out of the yard, that he wouldn’t be able to hear us calling for him. So we purchased Fi smart dog collars.

After we put Primo to sleep, I tried to cancel his Fi subscription. The option to cancel was buried in a few layers deep in the menus, but I eventually found it. The cancellation process was terrible.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take screenshots of my experience so I repeated the steps using other dog, Coco, so I could document the user experience.

There are six options for why we are cancelling our subscription. None of the options acknowledge that someone may have lost their pet.

From the bad options, I picked “My dog doesn’t run away.” It was sad, but true.

Fi proceeded to tell me that running away isn’t the only value Fi provides. I had to click through three screens explaining its other virtues.

I almost fell for hitting the “Keep Membership” button on the third screen, but instead I tapped the smaller “Continue with Cancellation” option after which my cancellation was immediately processed.

Just kidding. Of course that’s not what happened. That would be too easy. Instead, I was offered a free month.

Again, I found the small “Continue with Cancellation” option. And again, Fi tried to convince me to continue the subscription for my dead dog.

Am I sure? Yes, I’m damn sure.

That was the final step in the app. But all I had accomplished was opening a ticket to close the subscription. The process moved to email:

Subject: [Fi Support] We received your Cancellation Request!

Hi Jason,

Thank you for contacting Fi Customer Success!

Just to let you know, your request has been logged. We’ll be sure to email you within a few days to complete your membership cancellation. You will need to confirm your cancellation with our team.

In the meantime, your membership will be active, and you will continue to have access to the Fi app.

Best,
Fi Support 

The email informs me that not only will it be a few days to complete my membership cancellation, but that I will need to confirm the cancellation with their team. Apparently, finding the buried option and clicking through six screens in the app wasn’t enough to prove that I really wanted to cancel.

Then there are the parts of the email that grated on me.

“Thank you for contacting Fi Customer Success!” Why are you so happy? My dog just died.

“In the meantime, your membership will be active, and you will continue to have access to the Fi app.” Is that supposed to reassure me?

I was furious. I was also sad and emotionally drained. I shouldn’t have tried to do this the same day we put Primo to sleep. I fired off a terse email:

We had to put Primo to sleep today. Why do you make it so hard to cancel? Why wasn’t there an option for the loss of the pet? It was a terrible experience. Don’t try to upsell when we’re dealing with a loss. 

When I wrote this article and realized I wanted to quote what I wrote to Fi’s support team, I feared rereading the email. I thought I had been a jerk. But given the circumstances, I was reasonably cordial.

To Fi’s credit, a support person followed up and apologized. Primo’s subscription has been cancelled.

And we’re still using Fi for Coco because other than this experience, Fi has been everything we hoped it would be. Seriously, I highly recommend Fi for everything up until the moment you need to cancel.

Both of these poor experiences could have been easily avoided. Evite could provide a preview of text messages before it sends them. Fi could provide a cancellation option for when a pet dies.

These experiences remind me of the lessons in Design for Real Life by Sara Wachter-Boettcher and Eric Meyer. They share similar examples from Facebook and other organizations being similarly insensitive. And they provide tools and tactics for how to minimize the chances you will add to someone’s grief.

When I started writing this article, I didn’t plan to end it with a book recommendation. I was angry and sad. I wanted to share what happened to me so I could convince you to take a second look at any user experiences you have influence over.

But just sharing my experience doesn’t seem like it is enough. We like to provide concrete steps to improve web experiences. But even if I was qualified to address these topics, things are still a bit too raw. I don’t have the energy to write a list of things you should consider.

Instead, I realized that more than anything, I wished that someone at Evite and Fi had read Design for Real Life and had taken the book’s lessons to heart. If they had, then I’m certain my grieving family would have been better supported.