Beyond Environmentalism: A Holistic Approach to Sustainable Design

Written by Camila Del Río , UX Designer at BeeReal.

The concept of sustainability is often associated exclusively with environmental issues, although this is an important topic in this discussion, it is not the only one. To talk about sustainable development as a whole, it is essential to understand the triple impact model, which seeks a balance between the environment and economic and social development.

In this article, we will look at sustainable design as a field of study that recognises that sustainability encompasses more than environmental concerns. When facing complex design processes, it's essential to holistically support sustainable development, ensuring that products and services not only minimize their environmental impact but also support economic and social issues.

To address this triple impact model, there must be convergence between three main areas: the design, the development process and the life cycle of a service or product. As Victor Papanek mentions in his book "Design for the Real World", exhaustive research is necessary, because it allows us to deeply get to know our users and their ways of inhabiting spaces. Recognizing that design is not isolated from the people and their context, but coexists and is part of people's everyday life.?

“Design is basic to all human activities. The planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end constitutes a design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value of design as the primary, underlying matrix of life.” Victor Papanek.

These are 8 practical tools to achieve a sustainable product or service:

1. Getting to know the people who will have a relationship with the product or service: A stakeholders mapping can be created at the beginning of the research to provide us with a general understanding of the people who will interact with the product or service. This will make it easier to understand their particular and collective needs and conditions.
2. Ethnographic observation: It is crucial that we consider not only the needs of the users but also the impact that the product or service will have on the environment and society. Ethnographic observation is a powerful tool, which allows us to investigate and get to know people living, inhabiting, working and relating within their contexts, and also to understand indirect and environmental needs.
3. Collaborative design: Working with users to design the product or service will allow us to understand their needs and desires in greater depth, and to design solutions that meet their specific needs. In addition, by working with users, we can promote environmental and social awareness, which can help reduce the negative impact of design on their environment.
4. Building teams in an ethical and responsible way: Have you heard about the?"Who made my clothes" movement? It is a global campaign to raise consumer awareness about the working conditions of textile workers and encourage transparency in the fashion supply chain.?In the same way, in the world of software and in any other field of work, it is crucial for individuals to work under favourable conditions. It is also possible to expand work opportunities by giving minorities space for an equal opportunity development process. A good option for this is to work together with worker cooperatives.
5. Thinking in an environmental-centered design: Changing the vertical perspective of human-centered design, to a horizontal one where the environment and all non-human beings in it have equal value. This bias can help to keep environmental care in mind during the full process in order to achieve a fairer outcome.

6. Perspective design thinking: “The Great Horse Manure Crisis” of 1894 was a problem generated in London due to the increasing use of horses and carriages as a conveyance in the city. The amount of waste produced by the horses was such that there was no way to keep the streets clean, and the smell and dirt became a serious public health problem. This is a clear example of the importance of designing products and services with the whole life cycle in mind. Nowadays, forward-looking design is crucial to prevent long-term social, economic, and environmental problems. Design must consider all aspects of the digital product or service, from conception to disposal, including its environmental and social impact. By designing with this perspective, it is possible to identify and prevent problems before they become crises, such as “The Great Horse Manure Crisis”. Furthermore, the forward-looking design also involves considering how a product or service can evolve and adapt as the needs and demands of users and their environment change, and thus achieve a more sustainable, inclusive and responsible development that benefits society as a whole.

7. Iteration: Design thinking has shown us that design iterations are key to successful outcomes. It is essential that the design process does not stop after the first release, as this will help to improve the UX and minimise pain points along the way without the need to use and spend resources once the system is fully produced.

8.? Creating visual designs for all: There are resources created to achieve a final visual design that upholds principles of societal, economic, and environmental sustainability:

• Accessibility: Take into account accessibility principles so that everyone can easily use the product. Do not lose sight of colours, contrasts, type sizes, the user of screen readers and other conditions to achieve accessible designs.
• Responsible use of energy: Thinking in the optimization of energetic resources, for instance designing a dark visualization mode, could be useful to save energy for users' devices.
• Pretty is not necessarily functional: It is necessary to think about screen processing depending on the societies that will use digital products. If it is, for example, a resource-poor community with difficulties in accessing communication technologies, processing images or animations on a screen could be a big problem.

It may be pretentious to develop such a design process, but it seems clear from past experience that the key to success in complex design processes is to work hand in hand with users, envisioning scenarios and thinking about particular solutions. As designers, we need to be aware of our ethical role in creating sustainable experiences. When we prioritize sustainability in our design solutions, we are not only meeting the needs of a specific audience but also taking care of the spaces they inhabit and significantly improving the quality of life of the people and beings around them.

#SustainableDevelopment #DesignForGood #Design #UX