Recap: Web Sustainability Guidelines event
This issue: catch up on our Web Sustainability Guidelines event of Dec 14th 2023, with video, links and spill-over Q&A. Jump to the end for a quick note about leaving Substack.
Web sustainability grows up
The WSG are here and they are rocking our world. To better understand the new guidelines I sat down with three of the authors of the WSG to learn how to start applying the WSG to UX work. View the presentation below (with handy time-stamps).
About the WSG:
User-friendly guidelines at SustainableWebDesign.org
SustainableUX coverage of the WSG (November newsletter)
Meet the Web Sustainability Guidelines: video
Skip my rambling intro and dive into the action:
Meet the speakers (4mins)
Thorsten Jonas: WSG (what is it, why we need it) (4:30min)
Tim Frick (14mins): more background, especially the frameworks around ESG (Environmental Social Governance) (14min)
Tim Frick’s Introduction to the WSG slides at Google Slides.
Anne Faubry: examples of how to apply the WSG. (starts at 23mins)
Questions and Answers
“Will the WSG line up with legislation, similar to the story of WCAG?”
Answer:
Paraphrasing Tim: To become a standard that legislation can use, first the WSG needs to be fully adopted by the W3C. The W3C membership needs to vote. This may happen in 2024 or 2025.
See also: Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (EU)
Many opportunities to leverage the WSG for similar reporting initiatives.
Questions we didn’t get to:
“Existing tools for estimating energy and emissions such as the commonly used SWD method have very broad system boundaries. Are there any tools to estimate the emissions more specifically around the impact of the UX decisions we make?”
Tim: Why web perf tools should be reporting website carbon emissions (Web Performance Calendar)
Anne: only really possible by doing a full life-cycle assessment. But there are tools for estimating.
UX choices: no specific tool for estimating climate impact of UX decisions. But there is lots of evidence for which design decisions have a positive impact (for example, static vs dynamic pages; the impact of ad-tech)
Thorsten: see the “sustainable user journey” as a decision-making aid.
“Any recommendations when it comes to choosing non-human persona ? When I tried to do it for a digital product I was working on found it difficult to narrow down to who and what all can I consider?”
My take: to me this doesn’t feel that different from the approach for picking all the user/stakeholder personas - deciding how wide and deep to go depends on time, budget and other project factors. For finding out which non-humans are even relevant - that’s where exercises like consequence scanning (PDF) can come in handy.
Other links that came up:
Tarot cards of tech (Artefact)
Keep up with our speakers
Tim Frick (Mightybytes)
Speaking at UX Camp on the WSGs, Feb 10th
Hosting What Does Sustainable Marketing Mean for B Corps? webinar on March 5th (a conversation with the authors of this great book, registration is open to anyone)
Just published this post on redefining sustainable digital marketing for 2024, also based on the book above and with some recommendations relevant to UX designers.
Anne Faubry
designersethiques.org
Thorsten Jonas SUX Network.
“Become a sustainable UX Designer” course - coming soon
Replatforming - in progress
It’s well-reported that Substack has a Nazi problem. Like many others, I’m in the process of migrating this newsletter somewhere less appalling. There are a couple of green email newsletter providers that I’m checking out.
I’m hoping this process will be seamless for all, and to get it done in the next month. Thanks for bearing with me.