Studium: MA Digital Communication Environments
Jahr: 2026
Name: Irene
Mentor:innen: Bérénice Serra, Susanne Käser, Thomas Bircher
Instagram: @yonrong
This Master’s thesis is a research-driven exploratory service design project examining how a personal digital twin might support memory, reflection and self-understanding over time. The project is developed through Mia, the present self, and Mai, her memory-based digital twin.
Combining speculative design, self-observation, literature research and iterative prototyping, the project brings together conversation, visual memory and a personal knowledge space. Mai is not conceived as a real-time copy or a conventional chatbot. Instead, she responds through fragments of past images, conversations and personal information, forming a time-shifted presence that evolves as new memories are collected.
Using the designer herself as the first case, the project does not claim that this approach can be directly applied to everyone. Instead, it proposes a service design framework that may be adapted and further developed by others in the future.
The project also demonstrates that digital twins do not need to remain limited to industrial simulation, but may become more personal and reflective forms of service.