World Usability Day 2024: designing for a better world

This year’s World Usability Day theme is designing for a better world. It’s a great reminder to consider how we can use design to make the world more accessible and environmentally conscious.

When I saw this, I wondered how often do you consider the carbon footprint of any digital products or services that you use? When scrolling on your phone, do you ever ask what is the environmental impact of your actions? It’s unlikely for most people that it crosses their minds. After all, it can be hard to think about the physical effects of something that isn’t tangible.

The carbon footprint of the internet

Yet, when you look at the carbon footprint of the internet, the stats are quite simply staggering. If the internet was a country, its emissions would make it the 4th biggest polluter worldwide. In 2019, approximately 4.1 billion people or 53.6% of the global population used the internet. At that point, the internet accounted for 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions and it’s expected to double by 2025.

As an internet user, each of us is responsible for 414kg of carbon dioxide each year. The worst culprit of this is watching online videos; an incredible 300m tonnes of carbon dioxide is produced each year by this alone. Put another way, this makes up roughly 1% of global emissions.

What can be done?

There are some simple steps that individual users can take to help reduce the carbon footprint of the internet. These include:

• Reducing usage of search engines by going directly to a website if you know the address
• Switching off autoplay of videos on sites
• Unsubscribing from email newsletters if you’re no longer interested in them
• Sharing links where possible rather than attaching large files to emails
• Limit using “reply all” on emails whenever you can
• Shutting down computers when not in use

Although these may seem like small things, the cumulative effect can be massive. A typical business user creates 135kg CO2 each year from the simple act of sending emails. This is the equivalent of driving 200 miles in a family car.

Should we question the value of that email you’re about to send? Absolutely. If every adult in the UK sent one less “thanks” email, we could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year. When you consider this is the equivalent of taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road, it doesn’t feel quite so essential to click send.

What about design?

Individual actions won’t solve all the challenges of reducing the internet’s carbon footprint. As professionals involved in tech, we have a larger part to play.

Conversations are necessary to raise awareness, and to help encourage stakeholders to make the right decisions. The Sustainable Web Manifesto is a good basis for this, and covers six points:

• Clean: services provided will be powered by renewable energy
• Efficient: products and services will use the least amount of energy and material resources available
• Open: internet-enabled products and services will be accessible, allow for the open exchange of information, and allow users to control their data
• Honest: websites, mobile applications social networks, and other digital products and services will not mislead or exploit users
• Regenerative: the internet will support an economy that nourishes people and the planet
• Resilient: digital products and services will function in the times and places where people need them most.

This framework gives a great structure to what we should ensure when we’re designing digital products and services. An example of what can be done to achieve these goals, is through how content is organised on a site. If someone can’t find what they’re looking for through a poorly designed information architecture (IA) or site search, they’re likely to spend more time quickly reviewing pages before potentially looking at a competitor’s site.

When you consider each page load involves more data and electricity being used, you start to see how “bounce rates” aren’t just a measure of user experience but also the amount of carbon being used.

When choosing where to host digital services and products, think about the location of the servers – if these are close to your users, there’s less energy needed to transmit data. Some companies are committed to using renewable energy for their data centres, and this has a significant impact on their greenhouse gas emissions.

Another example of what can be done is when thinking about images and colours on a page. Some colours are more energy efficient; black has the lowest energy use while white has the highest. And while we’re probably all aware of the benefits of smaller image files when it comes to load speed, most of us may not have thought about how this reduces energy use.

Fast, lightweight pages help many people as they’re more effective when data or WiFi connections are limited. When we start focusing on what we can do to make this happen, we bring benefits to all people and the world we live in.

What about accessibility?

By following the guidelines for creating accessible products and services, we’re likely to produce more environmentally friendly ones too – since well-organised content that people can use easily and quickly, means there will be less energy needed for people to find what they want.

Disabling autoplay videos can help people with mobility or cognitive disabilities, as well as reduce emissions. When you consider that videos auto playing can interfere with some screen-readers, it feels like a no-brainer to prevent this happening.

These are just a few examples to demonstrate that by being conscious of designing in an environmentally friendly way, we can design for a better world for many.