Hi, I’m Sid and I am studying to be a Service Designer at Linköping University. Service Design is a relatively new field where we design all sorts of services ranging from food delivery services to public services like healthcare and education. We design services to be user-friendly and relevant to the needs of the user while making it sustainable and competitive for the service provider from a business perspective.
This spring term, I am writing my thesis and I have chosen to work on developing services where the creation of meaningful experiences is the goal. And to this end, I have chosen to work on Humanist weddings and funerals. It is the perfect setting where I will get the opportunity to design services where value systems, beliefs and personal philosophies play an important role in the creation of meaningful experiences.
Apart from digging into existing literature in fields such as philosophy, anthropology and psychology for insights. I will be conducting workshops where participants reflect and express their thoughts and ideas about what makes a meaningful relationship and how do we celebrate it in a wedding and what makes a meaningful life and how do we process it during a funeral.
The plan for the workshop on March 20, is the following –
1) Develop a shared understanding of humanist values around relationships and death
2) Discuss the role of Humanisterna as an organization
3) Partake in activities that make us reflect about our values, for example – designing our own gravestone.

If you would like to know more, or share your thoughts and ideas on this project. Please feel free to reach out. (Siddharth Arya, sidar934@student.liu.se, 0728450688)
I have written a more thorough introduction to the project here – https://www.sid.com.de/liberate/on-the-future-of-weddigns-and-funerals-thesis-log-0