PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT TOOL

How do you get people to
talk about death?
Make them laugh first.

DeathBTI is a ten-question quiz that sorts you into one of eight characters you meet at a Korean funeral. It looks like a meme. It is actually a conversation opener — and it is our most-shared piece of work.
10 questions 8 character types Live since Sept 2026 Korean only
Try the Korean version → See the eight types
WHY A QUIZ

A survey asks people to be honest.
A quiz lets them be recognised.

More than half of Korean adults have never talked about death with their family. Asking them directly does not work — the subject is closed before it opens. So we stopped asking, and started describing.
"Not a survey. A personality quiz — one people share while laughing." — the brief that reset the whole project, Sept 2026
The design rule that followed: the success metric is not how many people finish the quiz. It is how many press "send this to your family" at the end. Every other decision was made to serve that one number.
HOW IT WORKS

Eight characters first.
The grid came afterwards.

We tried drawing the matrix first and naming the boxes. Every attempt produced four good characters and four forced ones. So we reversed it — wrote eight people we had actually met at funerals, then asked what axes explained them. The grid that fell out was four resources × two timings.
Axis 1 · What do you reach for?
The resource a person leans on when death enters the room.
  • Knowledge — facts, procedures, what is correct
  • Relationships — people, presence, keeping others going
  • Experience — memory, feeling, what you have lived
  • Action — the body moves before the mind does
Axis 2 · When do you engage?
Long before it happens, or only in the moment.
  • Ahead of time — prepares, imagines, rehearses
  • In the moment — responds when it actually arrives
Users never see the axes. They see a character — because "you are the one who ends up in the kitchen" travels further than "you scored high on relational-responsive."
AHEAD OF TIMEIN THE MOMENT
KNOWLEDGE The Funeral Plannerhas picked the portrait The Condolence Researchergoogles the envelope amount
RELATIONSHIPS The Subject Changerends death talk in 0.5s The One in the Kitchensomehow always washing up
EXPERIENCE The Theoristwatched every documentary The Late Grieverfine by day, undone at 3am
ACTION Life-Is-Short Splurgerbooks a flight after a funeral Yukgaejang Secondsgrief and hunger, kept separate
THE EIGHT

Everyone recognises someone.
Usually themselves.

Each result is a single illustrated card, built in three beats: the sting (you have been seen), the turn (what looked like a flaw is care), one step (something small to do today). Cards are shown as published — in Korean.
The Condolence Researcher
TYPE 01 · KNOWLEDGE × IN THE MOMENT
The Condolence Researcher
조의금 리서처
Hears of a death and opens a search bar first: how much goes in the envelope, what to wear, how many bows.
The turn: you are afraid of hurting someone by getting it wrong. Rude people never bother to look it up.
The Funeral Planner
TYPE 02 · KNOWLEDGE × AHEAD OF TIME
The Funeral Planner
내 장례식 기획자
Has already chosen the portrait photo, and probably the playlist too.
The turn: the quietest possible kindness to the people who will be left behind.
The Subject Changer
TYPE 03 · RELATIONSHIPS × AHEAD OF TIME
The Subject Changer
화제전환의 달인
Shuts down any talk of death within half a second. "Don't say that."
The turn: you cannot listen because you love too much. Indifferent people just nod along.
The One in the Kitchen
TYPE 04 · RELATIONSHIPS × IN THE MOMENT
The One in the Kitchen
상갓집 실세
Comes to, and finds themselves washing dishes at the funeral hall.
The turn: you move grief with your hands. Rooms you are in keep running. But who looks after you?
The Late Griever
TYPE 05 · EXPERIENCE × IN THE MOMENT
The Late Griever
슬픔 지각생
Composed all day. Falls apart at three in the morning.
The turn: grief that arrives late is not shallow. You take longer because you go deeper.
The Theorist
TYPE 06 · EXPERIENCE × AHEAD OF TIME
The Theorist
죽음 이론가
Has seen every documentary on dying. Has had zero conversations about their own family.
The turn: rehearsing is not running away. Prepared people are the ones who stay standing.
Yukgaejang Seconds
TYPE 07 · ACTION × IN THE MOMENT
Yukgaejang Seconds
육개장 두 그릇
Keeps grief and hunger in separate compartments — and goes back for a second bowl.
Yukgaejang is the spicy beef soup served at every Korean funeral, around the clock, to everyone who comes.
The turn: your body moves toward living first. That is not guilt. That is mourning.
The Life-Is-Short Splurger
TYPE 08 · ACTION × AHEAD OF TIME
The Life-Is-Short Splurger
인생 짧다 카르페 디엠
Comes home from a funeral and books the flight.
The turn: you translate death into life faster than anyone. You use grief as fuel.
Card art: original illustrations of Arongi, our calico cat mascot — a rare male tortoiseshell, roughly 1 in 3,000.
MAKING IT FAIR

A quiz that always gives you
the same answer is a horoscope.

A shareable quiz still has to be defensible. We ran 200,000 randomised responses through the scoring engine and found three biases that would have quietly broken it.
BIAS 01
Weighted questions
One question carried more weight than the rest — so the types attached to its options appeared 21% of the time while others sat at 4%. Removed all weighting.
BIAS 02
Tie-break by favourite question
Ties were resolved by looking at one designated question, which pushed the same four types up every time. Removed the shortcut.
BIAS 03
Resource and timing entangled
When a single option encoded both axes, choosing a resource dragged a timing along with it — misclassifying timing in four of eight types. Measured separately.
10.89%p → 1.43%p
Spread between most and least frequent type
8 / 8
Types correctly recovered from designed inputs
200,000
Simulated runs per validation pass
The scoring engine is the single source of truth: one file drives the web quiz, the eight share pages and the response database. It refuses to publish if validation fails — no change reaches users without passing these checks.

Want one for your context?

DeathBTI is Korean-language only — the humour sits inside Korean funeral customs and does not survive translation. But the method travels: character-first design, a measurable grid behind it, and a validation loop that blocks release. If you are working on public engagement around dying, we are happy to share how it was built.

Email us → See it live (KO) →