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Digital = physical: A guide to sustainable digital design

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By Sandra Pallier (opens in new tab)

illustration showing steps to green design

Image credit: Sandra Pallier

When I think back to my design education, I remember learning about graphic design, print, web, photography, layout, and typography.​ But I don’t have a single memory of any teacher, lecturer, speaker, or student ever talking about the impact our designs had on the planet.  

Then I started working in technology, and the things I designed had to be human-centered and visually pleasing. The products had to be fast and so good that they became a bit addictive – ENGAGEMENT as the metric of success. Again, there was never a meeting where someone stopped and asked, “What are the negative impacts here? What are the things we’re not considering? What’s the impact this has on the planet?” 

Of course, those are hard questions to ask​​ and it’s difficult to understand what the impact of digital design on the planet might be.  

Digital = physical  

With physical products, it’s easy to see the impact from material sourcing, manufacturing and usage all the way to what happens at the end of a product’s life. You can easily visualize how you — as a designer — can make a difference.  

When thinking about digital design, however, things get trickier. The resources used are far-removed and abstract concepts that we don’t deal with day-to-day. Sustainability isn’t discussed in digital design, and there’s a misconception that digital design doesn’t do damage to the planet because you can’t see its effects.  

But a click of a button online can set off a whole range of chain reactions. From the user device through cables and wires back to a data centre, from one server to another server, getting the required data and then all the way back to the user’s device. For all of this to work, devices and infrastructure need to be manufactured and connected and then all these services require electricity. And most of the current electricity used on the planet now comes from burning fossil fuels. In fact, in 2017 only 17.3% (opens in new tab) of all the energy used came from renewables. Where can our choices have an impact on the future? Getting started is easier than you might think.  

Renewable energy sources 

Whatever you’re building, ensure that the energy required for your products and services comes from renewable energy sources. Microsoft is pretty good at this — see our Carbon Commitment from 2020 (opens in new tab) for more information. If you’re looking for more information on why this is important or how it can be done elsewhere, check out the resources at the bottom of this post.  

Reduce the energy required  

Reducing the energy required is where day-to-day design and product choices come in. I’ve learned tons from the ClimateAction.tech (opens in new tab) community as well as Tom Greenwood’s book Sustainable Web Design (opens in new tab) on this topic.  

First, you can start by asking the questions: Should we build this at all? Is whatever the product or services does or improves worth the carbon cost? If yes, then we get to the next stage of optimising and ensuring everything is as energy efficient as possible. Here are some ways to approach that: 

  • Simplify the user experience 
    • The fewer steps people take to get to what they need, the less data is  transmitted and the lower the carbon impact. Consider how users can get to what they need using the smallest possible amount of page and content loads. This also has the co-benefit of the user not having to look at tons of content they didn’t want to see. 
    • Work with your research and data partners to find common long user journeys people take and consider ways to shorten those. Look at yoyo user journeys, where users return to the same page again and again. Ask yourself why they keep going there and whether there’s a way to change this behaviour to reduce page loads. 
    • Another thing to consider is how you could streamline the content. Outdated content on a website or in an app still has a carbon cost because it is stored in a data centre. Delete what you don’t need.
  • Employ lightweight visuals 
    • Image and videos are the biggest data assets that get moved around online and therefore have the largest associated energy cost. Before adding lots of visual content, ask yourself whether it aids user understanding , or whether it’s critical to make the user experience enjoyable. If not, simply remove the visual. 
    • For any visual assets you end up using, ensure that you  optimise the content you need.​ Your aim should be to get to the smallest file​​​​​​ size possible
  • Watch the use of colour 
    • If you’re working on a product that will be viewed on different screens, you can think about the efficiency of colour too. For OLED screens darker colours are more energy efficient.
  • ​​​Consider storage implications  
    • Storage is interesting both in your design and project files, but also in what’s stored about the user point of view. Which data are we collecting that we don’t use? How long are meeting recordings saved? If a user has to create an account, is it easy to delete items or a whole account and all data that was captured with it?

I hope that this post has gotten you energized and motivated to begin the sustainable design journey on your team. To get started, think about holding a sustainability meeting to exchange ideas and find others of like mind. From there, you can form a v-team with interested people and look for ways to educate and speak up about moving from human-centered to planet-centered design. Because there is no Planet B!  

References and additional reading:  

ClimateAction.tech Greener Design Resources (opens in new tab) 

Communities: 

What do you think? How can you use these ideas to pursue green design in your work? What do you have to add? Tweet us your thoughts at @MicrosoftRI or follow us on Facebook (opens in new tab) and join the conversation.

Sandra Pallier is an Interaction Designer on Microsoft’s M365 Core Design Team. She is also the Co-organizer of ClimateAction.tech, a community of practice of tech workers that provides support and guidance for systemic change in our organisations and industries, to face the climate crisis.