The case for sustainable User Experience — better for users, business and the planet
Customers are spending more time behind the screen since the beginning of the pandemic. What are the opportunities to innovate in this new world?
The last two years have bought about unprecedented change. The COVID-19 pandemic has completely thrown life as we knew it upside down and still continues to wreak havoc across the globe. The world watches as the global death toll rises each day, and the gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. But there is one thing that sets this pandemic apart from the many our ancestors faced years ago. In 2020, we had technology on our side.
Those of us who had the privilege and luxury to access technology during these times have reinvented how we traditionally live and work. We were able to retreat to living our personal and professional lives entirely online and carry on with some level of new normality. Despite the inconvenience of rapid disruptions to businesses and systematic processes, many agree that these new ways of thinking about how we live and work could be a positive side effect of such a grim situation. Out of all the uncertainty and downright misery, it's been our under-stress natural environment that has benefited from our sudden online habituation and social isolation.
Globally scheduled national and international flights have reduced by an average of 46% over the last 15 months and our long daily commutes have dwindled to a trickle as restrictions of movement remain in place. As a result carbon dioxide emissions are predicted to have fallen by 7% globally.
By the end of 2020, 126 countries covering 51 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions had adopted, announced or were considering net-zero goals, and more discussions were had around the climate crisis than in the previous five years combined.
While positive, these small wins are not all that they seem, as our increased technology usage and “one-off” implementations have an adverse effect on the environment like never before.
Technologies impact on climate change
While we may have temporarily slowed our CO2 generation in one aspect of our lives, our transition to a world even more reliant on technology and the internet increases it in another. The most recent data tells us that in 2018 the internet accounted for 3.7% of the world's total carbon emissions, and before COVID 19, experts estimated that this figure would double by 2025.
In 2020 alone, our digital consumption nearly doubled across the globe. As more organisations embrace the benefits of employees working from home or running their business online, those initial estimates will only increase unless we make severe changes to how we interact and build our digital world.
Our industry is evolving and taking responsibility
In light of the threat technology poses to climate change, new sustainable design movements have emerged to challenge current practices and recenter the environmental responsibility onto the creators of technology itself.
Movements such as Planet Centred Design iterate on the well-known human-centred approach, shifting our self-centred focal point from solely humans to the planet as a whole. These sustainable design practices narrow down to domain-specific disciplines; one in particular that we get excited about is called Sustainable User Experience Design (UX).
Sustainable UX is a practice that aims to create sustainable digital products that don’t leave a carbon footprint”
Experience Design approach
Many practitioners and organisations are leading the way in this new field, such as the online conference sustainableux.com, a practitioner-led community called ClimateAction.Tech and Tom Greenwood, co-founder of wholegrain digital and author of “Sustainable Web Design”.
Discover: Understand the issue rather than merely assuming it. It involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues.
Define: The insight gathered from the discovery phase can help to define the challenge in a different way.
Develop: Give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.
Deliver: Involves testing out different solutions at small-scale, rejecting those that will not work and improving the ones that will.
The case for users — seamless user experience
Businesses and designers strive to meet consumers' ever-increasing demands, wanting more interactive and engaging online experiences. But it's come at a cost. The average size of a website has increased by 50% on desktop and 105% on mobile since 2015.
Sustainable UX aims to reduce distractions and empower users to complete their goals as quickly and efficiently as possible. It does this by only including media and content that genuinely adds value and removes anything else that will get in the way of users being successful. In doing so, customers spend less time aimlessly looking for what they need, and we reduce the amount of CO2 produced by minimising the time they spend online.
Research has shown that pages need to load between 0.1 and 1 second for users to feel that they are in control of the experience and under 10 seconds before leaving. Yet, according to Google, the average speed of loading a full mobile page in 2019 was 15 seconds.
When we implement Sustainable UX practices and reduce the amount of unnecessary content, plugins and animations, we automatically make our digital products load much quicker. As a result, sustainable digital products produce less CO2 whilst providing a snappier and more responsive user experience.
The case for users — empowering them to make sustainable decisions
Sustainable UX is about more than considering what we do and don’t include in our digital products. One of the most impactful aspects of this field surrounds empowering users to make more sustainable decisions themselves in their everyday lives.
This practice is called ‘green nudging’, and like all good design, it often goes completely unnoticed by consumers. There are some great real-world examples of this, such as how customers need to opt-in to disposable plastic cutlery on UberEats.
Or how Ecosia provides a ‘green leaf’ icon on search results, symbolising which links belong to businesses that run on renewable energy or meet a high ethical standard of conduct.
In return, it makes people feel great about themselves and their ability to contribute to fighting climate change and makes them feel even better about aligning themselves to sustainably driven businesses.
Through “green nudging”, designers have an opportunity to help people make more sustainable decisions that can significantly affect our planet.”
The case for businesses — building a good brand reputation
The acceleration of social and environmental activism worldwide, particularly from our younger generations, is rapidly transforming consumers' expectations of how businesses do business.
Today, consumers are more educated about the profound impact businesses can have on our environment. No longer is it sufficient to sell a good quality product or service; today, companies are also expected to act ethically according to social and environmental standards.
What's more, research by Unilever revealed that 33% of consumers are "choosing to buy from brands they believe are doing social or environmental good". Another report conducted by Oracle found that "52% of consumers stated that a key influence on loyalty is knowing that retailers are acting sustainably".
Having a solid brand reputation is not only crucial for increasing consumer loyalty and conversions, but it's also a critical factor in acquiring and retaining new talent. Research conducted in 2016 on Millennial employment engagement found that "64% (of Millenials) won't take a job if a company doesn't have strong corporate social responsibility values".
As our digital world grows exponentially, we have the opportunity to develop and maintain sustainable digital best practices within our organisations that can draw in the best talent and win customers' hearts.
Let's talk about how our team can help you.
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