Or as Tony Fry once said: “Does what we created justify what we destroy?” The digital products and services we design have a significant impact on the world. A simple example: the internet consumes a massive amount of energy. In 2020, it accounted for around 4% of global CO₂ emissions. By 2030, this number is expected to rise to 8%, and by 2040, to 14%. Breaking that down to a single website shows the impact more tangible: a website with 1 million visitors per month easily emits 10 tons of CO2 - per month. These carbon emissions are summarized from data centers, data transport and client devices. (Source: Green Web Foundation)

And the data centers where all the servers are located are not only causing massive amounts of carbon, because of their energy needs, they also consume a lot of fresh water that is used for cooling the servers. This water then is lost in the local context since it vaporizes. This is a massive problem in regions with water scarcity already. And at last the need for rare raw minerals which are necessary for the production of computer-chips is a huge ecological problem in the regions where these minerals are minded.

But this also leads to further important aspects of sustainability. Because it is more than “just” carbon and resource impacts. Sustainability and all its aspects are pretty well defined in the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN and we can find direct or indirect relations of our work to every single one of them. When we look at inequalities for example we can identify various negative impacts of digital products and also UX in detail to the world. Let’s have a look at two examples:

Amazon creates a pretty smooth and convenient experience for the user. It is super easy to shop, you get your stuff sometimes on the same day or on the next day. So, we could say, it is a very good user experience. But who is paying the price for this? Well, we have delivery drivers of Amazon's delivery unit who have super tight schedules, which could force them to skip lunch because it might be impossible to fulfill the schedule. Or we have truck drivers who move goods between Amazon’s different fulfillment centers, who sometimes work for weeks without even one day off (Source: Correctiv 2022). 

Or let us have a look at food delivery services like Uber Eats, Flink, Wolt, etc. Again they create a pretty smooth and convenient user experience. Their apps are designed slick and it is super easy for me as a user to order food or groceries and after a short amount of time these are delivered to my home door. But, who pays the price? The delivery riders are not paid well and often are not even employed, but “self employed” - which means they are not social secure. In addition the business model of these services is focussing on gaining market share, backed by huge amounts of venture capital. Small grocery stores in our cities cannot match the pricing of these services and could go bankrupt. Instead of disruptive services we should rather call them destructive (Source: Beckedahl). 

What we can see in these examples: The good User Experience for a user is quite often paid somewhere else. Being it by other people (like the delivery riders) or by the environment (by the environmental impact of the internet). And this is a fundamental problem of how we execute UX so far. By focussing on the user we miss all the other actors that are impacted by what we design and create. And there are always other actors. Every service or product or service is always part of a bigger ecosystem and interacts with it or impacts it. 

Kevin Slavin said many years ago: “When designers center around the user, where do the needs and desires of the other actors in the system go? The lens of the user obscures the ecosystem it affects.”   

The whole toolset of UX is designed to focus on the user. It puts the user in the center to understand her/his needs and desires to design experiences to fulfill them. Our UX toolset is missing the view on the affected ecosystem. Instead of putting the user into the center the user is just one part of many in a complex system and instead of focussing on one part we should target for a balanced state of all actors in the system. We need to move from a user-centered to a environmental and humanity centered design approach.

„We need to move from a user-centered to a environmental and humanity centered design approach. “

This is not only a task for designers. It is a task for everybody involved in building digital products. 80% of the emissions of a product (no matter if digital or physical or both) are determined in the design phase - whereby design phase here means also the engineering and development, so everything happening from first idea to market-ready. We that we are designing, building and managing digital products can influence how they are impacting the world. And it should be our obligation, but it is also a great opportunity to make the world a better place.

As Designers we can play a leading role here, because our tool- and mindset can be the basis for creating digital services that cause less harm. We just need to adjust and enhance our toolsets and then we can use it in our work but also provide it to all other stakeholders in the process. Being on strategic level, in research, in ideation or in information architecture and UI design. We can add and need to add sustainability in every step of the process. Sustainability is not one step in the product building process, but needs to be an underlying layer in every step of the process.

Besides adjusting and enhancing our toolset the first step is the mindset sift we need to undergo. We must not see the user any longer as the center of our doing but balancing it with all other actors in the system and placing the user equal to all other actors in the system. This approach is similar to what the life-centered design movement or also the planet-centric design propagate. And that is also important All these - including SUX - are not contrary. The basis is the same thought: the user must not be the center of our doing as designers, since users are just one actor of many.

In summary, Sustainable UX is about redefining the goals of user experience design to embrace environmental stewardship and social responsibility. By expanding the focus from individual user satisfaction to the broader impacts on ecosystems and communities, UX professionals can help forge a path toward more sustainable and equitable digital futures.

Thorsten Jonas is the Founder of the SUX Network and a Sustainable UX and Responsible AI consultant and keynote speaker. He is guiding teams and companies in crafting sustainable, responsible and ethical digital products and co-leads as invited expert the UX Chapter of the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines.

Sources:

Green Web Foundation, "Reference and Guide: Data Sources for calculating digital emissions", https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/news/data-sources-for-calculating-digital-emissions/

Correctiv, "Die Maschine Amazon", https://correctiv.org/aktuelles/ungerechte-arbeit/2022/11/23/amazon-kurierfahrer-lkw-logistikzentrum-paket/

Beckedahl M, "Die neuen Verteilungskämpfe",  https://netzpolitik.org/2021/gorillas-start-up-die-neuen-verteilungskaempfe/

Der Beitrag What is SUX and why we should care erschien zuerst auf SUX – The Sustainable UX Network.

1. Design for ecosystems instead of users

We design services, apps, and websites for our users. In doing so, we focus so intensely on the needs of our users and try to align them with business needs that we completely overlook who or what else is affected by our designs. Every product always has a larger systemic context. There are always additional actors (human and non-human) involved beside our users—directly or indirectly. We must stop designing solely for our users and instead always understand and review our work within the systemic context.

2. Understand the negative impacts

To design more sustainably, we need to understand the negative impacts of our products and designs and relate them to user and business needs. For example, what is the carbon impact and where does it occur? Which other actors pay the price for the convenience of the users? At what points in the user journey are the negative impacts particularly high? 

3. Design for all aspects of Sustainability

Sustainability is often equated with CO2 emissions. However, sustainability has many other aspects that we must consider in our designs, such as social justice, health, all living beings, sustainable consumption, etc. Reference recommendation: UN Sustainable Development Goals.

4. Design Carbon Friendly

A website with 2.5 million monthly visitors can easily have an impact of tons of CO2 per month, resulting from the provision, transmission, and display of data. Our design has a direct influence on how 'heavy' a website or app is. Thus, how much data needs to be transmitted to display it. What fonts, colors, images, and image formats or elements we use, or which content is necessary and which is not—the possibilities are numerous to make our design 'data-lighter.'

5. Design for Equality

Digital products often perpetuate existing injustices. Older people often cannot use digital services because they only have limited access to and knowledge of digital devices. Gender injustice often arises because digital services are too often designed based on the stereotypical (white) male. And social injustice is an integral part of many digital services. We must always check the digital products we design on all levels and aspects of equality to prevent existing or new injustices in the digital world from being perpetuated.

6. Design for Wellbeing and Fairness

We often design digital products user-centered, but in the end with the goal of meeting the needs of other stakeholders. Digital products are too often designed so that users, for example, stay engaged as long as possible (e.g., 'Infinite Scrolling') or buy as much as possible (e.g., many online shops). We must design digital products that treat users fairly and truly prioritize their wellbeing.

7. Design for sustainable Users

When we give users choices, we should ask ourselves which option is the most sustainable and make that the standard. An example from e-commerce that some shops have already implemented: In the ordering process, delivery to the next hub (e.g., parcel shop) becomes the standard, and home delivery must be actively selected. This reduces the number of trips with the delivery vehicle, which reduces the carbon impact (even an electric vehicle needs energy that must be generated) and improves working conditions for delivery drivers (social impact).

8. Solve the right Problems

As UX designers, we love to analyze, understand, and solve problems. However, we must also ensure that we are addressing the right problems and finding solutions that are sustainable in the long term. For instance, carbon offsets are often much less helpful than thought (up to 90% of the offsets through the supposed planting of trees are useless, according to the Guardian). Instead of integrating a function for carbon offsetting into our products in this case, we need to look at how we can generally reduce the energy consumption of our users or how they can make more sustainable decisions.

9. Design for less

A little less of everything must be our motto. A little less videos, images, and visual overload. A little less content and data storage. And a little less consumption and general use of everything. Many small impacts add up to make a big lever. And we designers can and must take direct influence on many points.

10. Make Sustainability Default

Sustainability cannot be achieved by adding an extra step 'sustainability' in the design process. Instead, sustainability must be an integral part of our entire design process. This means that every phase, from idea generation to final implementation, must be characterized by a consistent awareness of ecological, social, and economic responsibility. By adding these additional layers to every step of our design process, we ensure that all decisions can also be reviewed and assessed in the context of sustainability.

11. Design new Narratives

We must not only design our products sustainable but also the narratives surrounding them. Because sustainability still unfortunately has the reputation of being mainly a cost factor. However, this is not true. For example, Capgemini has found in a study on 'Sustainable Product Design' that it not only results in the reduction of CO2 but also has a positive impact on customer relationships and the relationship of employees with the brand/company, and it includes opportunities for profit increases. Sustainability is already a business case. And we all must help establish this narrative by continually talking about it: with colleagues, with customers, and with all stakeholders.

Thorsten Jonas is the Founder of the SUX Network and a Sustainable UX and Responsible AI consultant and keynote speaker. He is guiding teams and companies in crafting sustainable, responsible and ethical digital products and co-leads as invited expert the UX Chapter of the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines.

Der Beitrag The Principles of Sustainable UX erschien zuerst auf SUX – The Sustainable UX Network.

Der Beitrag How to get started with Sustainable UX erschien zuerst auf SUX – The Sustainable UX Network.