Law students at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have worked with the Australian nonprofit funeral service, Tender Funerals, to create an empowering tool that enables users to quickly generate a tailored “End of Life Notebook” that contains the user’s personal notes and wishes related to end-of-life.
Creating the notebook generator had long been a goal of the Tender Funerals founders, who know that people struggle to learn about their options and tasks related to end-of-life — and struggle even harder to write-down their notes and wishes.
Tender Funerals explained these challenges to a team of five law students at UTS who built the tool using the Neota software development platform.
After taking the user through a dynamic, automated interview, the tool generates a tailored document in up to five sections, depending on the preferences of the user:
The tool is intended to be used by members of the public who are starting to think about their end-of-life planning. The opening screen explains, “This tool was created to help you think, feel, and act on what is important to you regarding the end-of-life issues that we all face.” The user can download their tailored notebook as a Microsoft Word document and continue to edit it on their own.
The technical structure of the tool is modeled in part on tools that have been created by large corporations with the Neota platform to generate personalized employee handbooks for individual employees.
Hannah Lambert, a leader on the UTS student development tea, shared that connecting technology with a core human experience positively shaped her understanding of automated tools and the important benefit of preparing for end of life. Hannah also noted that building the tool part of her legal education gave her an appreciation of human-centered technology and its ability to provide a personal interview that creates a tailored output for an unlimited number of people. Hannah added that “including sensitive and emotional questions in a tool that is educational and functional really added to my enjoyment of the building experience.”
Tender Funerals staff member, Stephanie Isvik, who is managing the notebook project for Tender Funerals, said that reaction to the tool has been very positive and that users have said that “they appreciate the opportunity to work with an interactive tool that has been developed with such thoughtfulness.”
She added: “This tool will provide great support to our work of facilitating end-of-life conversations and helping people think about what’s important to them. We’re very grateful to the UTS students and the team at Neota for helping us make this wonderful tool a reality.”
The UTS student development team was supervised by Dr Sacha Molitorisz, Senior Lecturer in Law at UTS. Each student member indicated that they have a passion for social justice and counseling people in need. They were able to leverage their passions – and their legal skills – through this law school project that has real-world impact. Kristie Mui was the Project Manager, Natalie Yaacoub was the Client Liaison, Paris Mitropoulos served as the User Experience Specialist, Hannah Lambert was the App Developer, and Grace Yin was the Quality Assurance Specialist.
Neota greatly appreciates the opportunity to support innovative and purpose-driven organizations like University of Technology Sydney and Tender Funerals that are creating real-world solutions for a better world.
