Designing digital interaction for people facing the end-of-life at an early or middle adult life is a challenging task. The user, who may be a person of similar age, culture and social status as the designers, is nevertheless living in a reality nothing short of alien to them. For the designer, approaching the users and considering their circumstances – their reality is extremely stressful.

A theoretical framework is built to help the designers. Two psychological theories that address the end-of-life have been fused together through the Grounded Theory paradigm. The first theory is the Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development, focusing primarily on the ninth stage. The second theory is the Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief, taken in her original, non-sequential manner describing a person’s grief over their own demise (preparatory grief) rather than more general grief.

Co-Design, Agile and Design Science Research are brought together with this theoretical framework to assist the user to face their own death and to realistically appreciate that reality, which gives the designers solid ground on which to stand, when facing this ultimate application area.

The outcome is a framework of 13 categories of human desires at end-of-life, accompanied with conceptual ideas of how to meet these desires with digital solutions.