Green UX

Digitalisation offers many opportunities in relation to climate change, as new technologies can be used to reduce the ecological footprint, for example in the area of mobility, in the form of optimized production processes or energy supply. At the same time it intensifies problems in several fields.

At the beginning of July, Google admitted in its latest climate report that the scaling of AI has led to a massive increase in the company's carbon emissions due to its enormous power consumption. Video streaming is another prominent example of an energy-intensive application, and also the amount of data, that is transferred when a webpage is loaded, correlates to its power consumption.

The average weight of a web page continues to increase and is currently at 2.6 MB in desktop format - not even including elements that are loaded via lazy loading. 

So digital action always has a physical impact.

Put simply, we are all constantly producing and consuming data that needs to be stored or processed in data and computing centres, transmitted across networks and infrastructure, and interpreted by our end devices. All of this leads to ever-increasing energy consumption - and the production of energy leads to carbon emissions, the amount of which depends on the energy source. In Austria, we are fortunate to be able to obtain a large part of our energy needs from renewable sources, but in many regions of the world the situation is very different. In addition, large amounts of water are needed to cool servers in data centres, the production of hardware is far from environmentally friendly, and the huge amount of electronic waste, of which only a small proportion is properly recycled worldwide, is a massive problem. In addition, many digital products encourage over-consumption, causing further environmental problems.

In 2021, I listened to an episode of the BBC Sounds podcast called "The Climate Question – Can the internet ever be green?", in which Professor Rabih Bashroush explained that every time the famous footballer Christiano Ronaldo shares a picture with his 240 million followers on Instagram, a whopping 36 MWh hours of electricity are consumed. – This is roughly equivalent to the annual energy consumption of 10 Austrian households! This striking example motivated me to delve deeper into the topic, and Green UX and sustainable web design became a matter close to my heart and the subject of my master's thesis in the User Experience Management programme at the University of Applied Sciences in Vienna. Since then I have been invited to several events to present my findings. It was at one of these events that I met drunomics Managing Partner & COO Oliver Berndt, and it was immediately clear that he was going to drive the topic forward at drunomics.

In short, Green UX is about balancing the needs of users with the needs of our home planet. We need to move away from a user-centred approach to design, which always takes into account the needs of a specific group of users at a specific point in time (usually "now"), to a humanity-centred or planet-centred approach, which puts the needs of humanity as a whole and the planet, now and in the future, above all decisions.

One thing is clear: those of us who work in this field, whether designers, conceptors or developers, have a responsibility. It is up to us to create digital solutions that are as energy efficient as possible, that encourage environmentally friendly behaviour and that do not force users to buy new devices too often.

At the drunomics team event at the end of June, we held a workshop to gather ideas and approaches on how we at drunomics can contribute to a greener internet.  

Thanks to our broad team of experts, we can implement measures at every project stage to reduce the amount of data on a website and thus save energy. However, the greatest impact on the environmental footprint of a solution can be achieved by considering the issue from the very beginning of the project, from conception, content strategy, information architecture and design to infrastructure, development and maintenance.

For a "green" website, for example, there are three main objectives in terms of energy consumption: Avoid unnecessary page views, minimize the amount of data on each individual webpage and keep an eye on the energy consumption of the end devices. A good concept, efficient user guidance and a design that is tailored to the needs of the user are the foundation for achieving these goals. Developers can then work their magic to ensure an optimal result through efficient code, data compression, caching, etc. 

Is Green UX the better UX? 

Or: What are the benefits of Green UX, apart from the good feeling of not polluting the environment more than necessary?

• Performance:

The focus on energy efficiency, through various design and development measures, results in faster loading times, which has been proven to have a positive impact on the user experience. (There are numerous studies showing that faster loading times lead to lower bounce rates and better conversion).

• SEO: 

Search engines such as Google also use website loading speed as a ranking criterion.

• Accessibility:

The core message of the ISO definition of accessibility is that it is not just about design for users with special usage needs due to physical impairments, but about a general extension of the target group to the largest possible group of people in different usage contexts.

The focus on energy efficiency is a good basis for this, as "green" websites work on a wide range of devices by minimizing the amount of data and not burdening the processors of end devices unnecessarily. (Of course, additional optimizations are needed for assistive devices such as screen readers, Braille displays, etc.). Even in places or situations with poor internet connectivity, "green" websites have an advantage - think of a train journey or a trip to the mountains.

Basically, applications that force users to constantly buy new devices and only work well with the best possible bandwidth are not just an environmental problem. It is also a social problem, because not everyone can afford a new smartphone every two years, and not everyone is surfing on a 5G data flat rate.

• Usability: 

Of course, simply reducing the amount of data on a website does not automatically lead to good usability. Good UX work, i.e. knowing and understanding users' needs, is still necessary for 'green' websites, or even more important, because there is an even greater effort to adapt content and functionality perfectly to these needs, to implement them in the 'lightest' way possible and to leave out unnecessary things. However, if done correctly and users are always provided with the right information at the right time in the most efficient way, Green UX can have a positive impact on usability. 

• User Experience: 

An efficient content strategy that reduces content to the essentials, good usability and high performance will ultimately have a positive impact on user experience.

When it comes to UI design, it is important to find a reasonable balance between aesthetics and energy efficiency. However, there are far fewer compromises to be made than you might think. By using modern image formats and the right image sizes, as well as optimizing images and fonts, and efficiently implementing the design in code, a remarkable amount of data can be saved. Avoiding images and animations that add no value to the user as well as videos that automatically load and play without the user's consent, is not only a good basis for energy efficiency, but also for a good user experience.

In addition to the focus on energy efficiency, Green UX has other aspects to offer. Terms such as 'green patterns' or 'digital green nudging' refer to design patterns, information or content elements that help users make more sustainable decisions. Examples include highlighting sustainably produced products, providing more energy-efficient default settings for video streaming, offering more environmentally friendly shipping options, or informing users about the environmental impact of a purchase decision. There are also opportunities to inform users that they are interacting with a green digital application, or to raise awareness of the physical impact of digital behaviour. All of this can enhance the perception of the digital solution, and therefore the organization behind it, as environmentally friendly and thus improve the user experience for an environmentally conscious user group. 

Let's green the web together!

„Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere.“ 

(United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres)