How can content designers contribute to sustainability goals?

The recent scary UK heatwave gave added weight to ongoing conversations about sustainability. As a content designer, I want to know what I can do to help in my day-to-day work.

Most of the writing I see on this subject feels, for now, pretty thin.

Everyone seems to agree it’s good and right, but there are few concrete suggestions for what it means in practice.

In fact, thinking purely of content design, there’s only one suggestion that seems to crop up time and again.

“Use fewer images”

Web pages or interfaces with images take longer to load and have a bigger carbon footprint. So, use them with care, if you care.

This also happens to align with some of the basic principles of content design: if images aren’t helping users get what they need, why are they there?

In the private sector, where content design is often tangled up with marketing, there might be room for improvement in this area.

I find myself thinking of the websites I worked on in a previous role which used photography and illustration to help distinguish one client from the next, when all those clients operated in the same sector.

Perhaps the contribution a content designer or copywriter (very different things, I know, I know) could make in that context is finding a way to let words carry more weight when it comes to tone and brand identity.

In the public sector, though, it feels as if this battle is all but won. Try to find a purely decorative image on most UK Government websites and you’ll probably be hunting around for quite a while.

So, what else?

Content design is sustainability

In some other content-related fields, it’s about making people hang around as long as possible (dwell-time) or hooking them into repeat visits.

It’s about making content sticky, addictive, and other words that, when you think about it, don’t sound so great.

But as content designers, we’re relentlessly focused on making user journeys as efficient as can be.

We work with our colleagues in service design and product design to get users from A to B quickly, neatly, without frustrating diversions.

If users are going back and forth, loading and reloading pages, clicking every link they can find in search of the information they need... We’ve dropped the ball.

Spread the good word

Perhaps the most useful thing we can do, then, is encourage more corporate bodies to embrace content design as a discipline.

If your organisation has sustainability as a value, but is still addicted to splashy graphics, meandering journeys and deceptive patterns, perhaps it’s time for a change.

Because putting users and their needs first instantly reduces waste – and feels good, too.

What have I missed?

Can you think of anything content designers do, or should be doing, to contribute to sustainability goals? Let me know what I’ve overlooked.