Wir sprachen mit UX-Designerin bei Microsoft und Mitinitiatorin der Slack-Community Climate Action Tech
Can you please explain what Climate Action Tech aims for?
ClimateAction.tech is an online Slack community and we aim to equip tech workers with the knowledge and skill to become effective agents of change in their area of influence. Our community exists to define, improve, and promote our practice: Taking climate action at work. We do this by creating a space for social learning, support, and community where we can develop a shared understanding and connect to each other.
How in general can web professionals help to make the web more energy efficient?
A lot of it is about reduction of stuff. From a designers point of view it’s about shortening user journeys and choosing the lowest energy mediums for your message. Then there’s the content and maintenance perspective, like removing unsed or outdated information. And from a developer point of view energy efficiency is about keeping page weights low which often relates to performance improvements as well. Whether that’s lazy-loading images, optimising data transfers, or removing unused code or plug-ins.
How in detail can Interaction/UI/UX designers support a greener web?
As I already mentioned, designers can think about shortening user journeys and optimising content. Avoiding auto-loading content, removing content you don’t need, reducing file sizes, optimising fonts, storing only what you need, and optimising for older devices are all actions you can take. There’s tons of great tips out there and I can recommend taking a look at sustainablewebdesign.org for more information.
What kind of mindset does it need when it comes to sustainable web design?
I think one important thing is not to forget that it’s not all about energy efficiency. Sustainability is so much broader than that. We need a minset where we can challenge the status quo. It’s about thinking bigger before you start as well as building better by default. In the Green Design v-team at Microsoft we’ve used these two phrases as anchors for our Green Design Principles. You can learn more about those here.
How to convince stakeholders of sustainable aims?
Often it’s helpful to understand what they value and whether you can link that back to sustainability. For example, if a stakeholder values performance — there’s direct links to energy efficiency that you can present as a co-benefit. Part of getting a stakeholder onboard will be about making the topic relatable to them and their values, and part of it might also be about empowering them through raising their awareness and pointing them to resources where they can learn more.
What (mental) concerns and challenges do we have to overcome for a sustainable web design?
Going away from the “build fast and break things” and “more is better” mindset are going to be tricky. In the tech industry shipping new features is seen as successful. Cleaning up old code, making things backwards compatible, or deleting things — those things are essential to building a sustainable web, but they’re not valued as highly as shipping something new. This mindset shift will be difficult to overcome. But I’m confident we can do it.
Are there enough tools for web designers/developers or do we need more tools?
There’s more and more tools out there and the Green Software Foundation is a great group to look into on this topic. That said, tools being out there, doesn’t mean that they’re adopted. Pushing your team to be early adopters and advocating for sustainable web design & development can help in raising awareness and bringing those tools into the spotlight and into mainstream education and tech practices.
Is enough research done on clean software or should there be a lot more?
We need more — especially on digital sustainability! Crucially we need more transparency in tech supply chains and from data centers and hosting providers.
Do you think web professionals should also train climate change communication?
Climate communications is a pretty specific topic. I think it’s important for web professional to have a basic understanding of climate, how tech relates to climate, how society is structured, societal inequities, and how that relates to tech.
Did I forget something, do you want to add something?
I’ll just use this opportunity for another ClimateAction.tech plug — join us if you’re intrigued to learn more about sustainability & tech.
