Conscious Digital Design

Our Job is to Make Good Choices Simple

Mitigating the internet’s environmental impact is a shared responsibility, with digital designers playing a key role in reducing carbon-producing digital waste. Good design makes the product or service stand out, but conscious design also contributes with a positive impact to the planet.

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The conscious user experience emphasises quick and honest paths that guide the user to make better choices

UX designers can support sustainability goals and meet the evolving preferences of environmentally conscious consumers. Visual and content design should collaborate to communicate these initiatives effectively, ensuring that users are informed and empowered to make eco-friendly choices in their digital experiences.

From a visual design perspective, eco-friendly digital products feature minimalist and lightweight visual elements that not only enhance aesthetics but also contribute to faster load times and lower energy usage.

UI’s can also encourage sustainable behaviour by guiding users. This is where good content design makes the difference, with concise information and a nice tone-of-voice that helps nudge the user toward preferred choices.

By making content more discoverable and reducing data loads, designers can contribute to environmental efforts while enhancing brand value.

Principles

1. Simple and clear user experiences

Encourage task efficiency while nudging users towards sustainable behaviour. Embrace minimalism and simplicity to reduce visual clutter and cognitive load.

2. Reuse assets – build a design system

An efficient design system maximises reuse and minimises waste. Refrain from creating new components that might do the same thing as something already available. This way, we can prevent unnecessary coding and keep the design library optimised.

3. Emphasise transparency and honesty

Avoid manipulative dark patterns such as misleading buttons or hidden fees. Ensure of transparent communication on environmental impact, and use straightforward language to explain eco-friendly practices.

4. Tailor to user preferences

Offer features like dark mode for accessibility and energy efficiency, personalised recommendations based on user behaviour, adjustable text size for better readability, and options for simplified layouts to enhance usability.

5. Emphasise sustainable choices

Make sustainable choices the default, from dark mode to greener delivery options, for a more eco-friendly experience.

6. Reconsider content/functionalities

Think about page weight compared to the value a functionality brings. If features like embedded video players, social media feeds, or large image galleries add more weight than actual user value, consider linking to external services instead.

Have you considered how to encourage the user to make more sustainable choices?

Takeouts from our evaluation checklist 1/3
Is there a design system or component library in place to reuse content and assets without unnecessary duplicates?

Takeouts from our evaluation checklist 2/3
Have you optimised user flows from an energy consumption perspective?

Takeouts from our evaluation checklist 3/3

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Contents:

Theme introduction & Principles
Checklists for the 4 themes to evaluate your work with

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Introduction & theory

22.01.2024 DIGITAL SOCIETY

Our Job is to Make Good Choices Simple

The conscious user experience emphasises quick and honest paths that guide the user to make better choices

By making content more discoverable and reducing data loads, designers can contribute to environmental efforts while enhancing brand value.