💼 Working in Sustainable Design

See this post: https://climate-tech.getoutline.com/doc/working-in-sustainable-design-zcD3be9ADN

🛠️ Resources

See Greener Design Resources

🎨 I’m a designer — what can I do?

Step 1: Figure out what you can change

Think about the impact of your work (UX worker CO2 sheet) as you’re doing it. Think about the implications of your work as it’s used by others.

Try using this framework (from Chris Adam’s talk at DjangoCon 2021) to figure out where you can make a change:

• Consumption - can i change how much we need?

• Intensity - can i change how much we pollute?

• Direction - can i change where we are heading?

Step 2: Speak up, ask questions, break climate silence

Fundamental questions

• Why are we doing this?

  • Do the benefits of this work outweigh the environmental and social cost?

  • Are we encouraging conservation or consumption?

• Who is harmed? Who is helped?

  • How can we adapt our practice to incorporate the environment in the now and in the long term?

  • How can we prioritise individual and planet health over corporations’ profits?

• What does success look like?

  • What metric are we basing success on right now and why?

  • What would happen if we made these “non-human people” part of the design process? What if our stakeholders included rivers, bacteria, insects, animals? (Questions posed by Anna van der Togt at a sustainable UX meetup [summary here])

Implementation questions

• Is there a greener / more energy-efficient solution to this?

• Why are we collecting this data? What data do we really need? Why have we not used this data? Can we now delete it / archive it?

• What needs to be done differently to inflict the least amount of harm to the planet?

Step 3: Incorporate sustainability in your workflow

Workshops

• Don’t just map the customer journey but consider the full lifecycle or system (and the waste produced along the way)

• Use the 4D Sustainability Canvas: A workshop explained here which can be used to take stock and map impact, then link your work back to the UN SDGs and finally help define sustainability targets

• Use the Planet Centric Design Toolkit: This toolkit comes with a great guideline for how to run a ~3h collaborative workshop

• Think about Circular Economy: Use any of these four different workshop ideas to think about circular design

In your design work

• Streamline user journeys (the fewer steps people have to take to get to what they need > the less data has to be transmitted > the lower the carbon impact)

• Measure waste, electricity use, etc. to have a starting point for comparison

• Carbon-aware design (e.g. changing the design depending on how much renewable energy is in the electricity grid – good example of this here)

• Set smart defaults & don’t put the burden on the user (e.g. can you ship without autoplaying videos per default? What other green defaults can you set?)

• Be selective about the data you collect (analytics, ads and tracking are energy intensive components of a site or platform)

• Go away from the attention-economy [1]

• Optimize images & media better [2]

• Apply the reduce, reuse, recycle framework to design

• Visualise waste

  • 🌳 Example: Using images of trees. One tree can sequester about 10kg of CO2 per year. estimate such a tree has 10,000 leaves, so one leaf can deal with 1g of CO2. So, if you send an email, 4 leaves have to get to work dealing with the CO2 you've caused.

  • 🍼 Example: A single use plastic bottle emissions creates approximately 56g of CO2 emissions during its short life. One hour of streaming video in 2019 is on average 36gCO2. With 3.2 hours of average daily usage per subscriber, each subscriber consumes around 100g CO2. Which is like consuming two single used plastic bottle per day. Netflix has 209 million global paid memberships and the impact of Netflix per day is 400 millions of single use plastic bottle.

[1] Cut the noise and provide users with a calmer and more considered experience that allows them to choose what they look at rather than an algorithm deciding and auto-loading what might keep a user’s attention the longest [source]

[2] Learn more: https://web.dev/fast/#optimize-your-images

How you store your work

From the Digital Earth Experience Principles from Gerry McGovern:

• Delete 90%: Constant review/archive/delete

• Minimize creation waste: Less content/code/communication

🔢 Design Principles

Green Design Principles

Article by Microsoft and Green Design Principles put together by a v-team at Microsoft

Split into two categories, think bigger before you start offers fundamental questions to ask yourself and your team when starting a new project or when you’re re-evaluating your project. Build better by default focusses on actions you can take during the design & development process.

Think bigger before you start

• Challenge the status quo

• Put care first

Build better by default

• Optimized

• Transparent

• Adaptable

Sustainable Service Design Principles

Article by Snook (Scottish design agency) and CAST (UK charity)

The principles start with guidance to build the foundation (principles 1–4), then focus on specific service considerations & getting into the details (principles 5–8)

1. Make climate a priority

2. Take responsibility

3. Go for radical

4. Build a community of practice

5. Use data to get started

6. Balance short and long-term actions

7. Seek solutions with co-benefits

8. Be pragmatic and opportunistic

Sustainable Interaction Design Principles

Article by Tom Jarrett

These principles are part of a case study for Branch Magazine – a magazine designed to be ‘Demand Responsive’ to adapt to and reflect the physical infrastructure of the internet and the energy behind it.

1. Carbon and energy conscious design

2. Not putting the burden on the users

3. You don’t have to sacrifice experience

4. Disconnect from the ad networks

5. Attention-economy

6. Challenge infinite digital growth

Digital Earth Experience Design Principles

Video by Gerry McGovern

These principles focus on digital waste because if we reduce waste we can still have the exact same outcomes with much less energy/emissions.

1. Establish true value & true cost: Avoid addiction to free/cheap

2. Degrowth: Don’t create/collect/buy

3. Delete 90%: Constant review/archive/delete

4. Reuse, share: Reward reuse and sharing

5. Minimize creation waste: Less content/code/communication

6. Minimize use waste: Less waste during use

7. Visualize outcomes: Visualize the waste digital creates

To implement these principles at work, you could start by asking questions like: Why are we doing this? Why are we collecting this? Why have we not used this data? Can we now delete it / archive it?

Design for Crisis Principles

Crowdsourced by Lou Downe

1. Do no harm

2. Speak the truth

3. Go to where people are

4. Be clear, and actionable

5. Go to where people are

6. Prioritize the most vulnerable

7. Give power back

8. Encourage the right behaviors from users and staff

9. Respond to change quickly

10. Scale responsibly

11. Remove barriers to ask for help

Climate Visuals Principles

Each principle is explained in more detail in a full report about the principles, and explaining the research methodology used.

1. Show ‘real people’ not staged photo-ops

2. Tell new stories

3. Show climate causes at scale

4. Climate impacts are emotionally powerful

5. Understand your audience

6. Show local (but serious) climate impacts

7. Be very careful with protest imagery