Become a Sustainable User Experience Specialist

Should there be a certification for a “Sustainable Digital Property” just like how Physical Spaces get “LEED Certified”? I wish we can do that !!

The Architecture community is working towards making physical spaces Environment friendly for a long time now.. Couldn’t the Digital Experience community take inspiration from this and work towards making digital spaces environmental friendly as well?

As Digital Experience specialists, we all the time do our best to use persuasion techniques to shape consumer behaviour so that we can achieve business objectives. Then why can’t we use these very techniques to shape consumer behaviour to make “Greener Choices” in the Digital world? 

For e.g.: Can we make the consumer behaviour that helps sustainability as the system supported default? For example, we all have 1000’s of emails that sit in our Inbox which we will probably never reference and so should we design such that we inform the user that the emails will be purged after a specific time period unless they have marked it for being saved for ever. But the user could be made to consciously choose to pick this more environmentally harmful option of saving for ever. How we present this so that the consumer shift happens towards not saving emails, is the real test of skills for the Digital Experience specialists. 

The consumers being one side of the coin, the bigger challenge might be the “Business” (read Management) which is the other side of the coin. Rather than convincing management about how you could create an Amazing User Experience, could we convince them about creating an Amazing “Sustainable” User Experience? 

Make a decision this new year to not just be a User Experience Specialist but become a “Sustainable User Experience Specialist”.. It not only makes you more attractive out of curiosity while getting hired, but also could make you feel a little bit more fulfilled by doing your bit for a greener planet. 

 “Nothing worth having comes easy.” - Theodore Roosevelt

Make a Difference In the Digital World Today!

Wishing you all a happy new year.