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Summary
Addressing climate in your UX work can feel out-of-bounds, but this story—and the approach it inspired—proves otherwise. While helping to optimise a client’s website for performance, James had a eureka moment: realising that if you focus on minimising key user journeys, you create the maximum value for users and the business while minimising your impact on the planet. Building on that insight, James has developed a simple and practical digital decarbonisation approach that empowers UX professionals to integrate climate-conscious approaches into their everyday work by focussing on minimising the carbon footprint of their highest value user journeys. Watch this session learn the benefits of minimising and how to use this approach to help them create better user experiences that create the maximum value for the business and our users, while minimising their impact on the planet. Key takeaways: How to use this approach to create space for climate-conscious work in your UX role Why minimising benefits people, planet, performance and profit Pragmatic methods for achieving sustainable outcomes in real-world projects How to decarbonise high-value user journeys by minimising and applying the W3C’s Web Sustainability Guidelines
Key Insights
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Minimizing page weight directly correlates with an approximate 80% reduction in carbon emissions during digital user journeys.
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UX principles like simplicity and minimizing complexity inherently support sustainable design and decarbonization.
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Visualizing carbon footprints as a swim lane within user journey maps can provoke awareness and motivate organizational action.
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Starting sustainability efforts by focusing on specific high-value journeys makes the process manageable and achievable.
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Tools like the Website Carbon Calculator and Google Lighthouse provide measurable, accessible data to benchmark and improve sustainability.
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Performance improvements act as a Trojan horse for sustainability, providing business value and easier adoption in organizations.
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There is tension between accessibility needs and carbon impact, requiring careful balancing but not compromising user experience.
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Information architecture and digital housekeeping are critical yet neglected areas to maintain sustainable, efficient digital systems.
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Language choice is a powerful tool; sustainability can be framed around performance and minimizing to gain stakeholder buy-in.
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Continuous progress and iterative improvement are more effective strategies than seeking perfection when integrating sustainability in UX.
Notable Quotes
"The unintended consequence was that the carbon footprint of that journey was reduced by about 80%."
"We are already doing climate design; less is more has always been UX’s mantra."
"Performance could be a useful Trojan horse for sustainability."
"Start small, focus on a high-value journey, and build from there to avoid overwhelm."
"Visualizing carbon footprints as a swim lane on a journey map can provoke valuable conversations with senior management."
"We do the heavy lifting for users so they don’t have to think about the sustainability impact."
"It’s time to bring information architecture back as a key part of sustainable digital design."
"Choose your language carefully; sometimes not using 'sustainability' gets better traction."
"Aim for progress over perfection; sustainability in UX is a continuous journey."
"We’ve got superpowers in UX to translate complex business and user needs in ways that can integrate sustainability."
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