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With so many natural disasters occurring every day around the world and the unexpected changes in weather patterns happening right in front of our eyes, there's no room for denying the consequences of global warming or climate change.
Greenhouse gas emissions are skyrocketing while humans keep gobbling down Earth's resources at an alarming rate.
As a preventive measure, many experts promoted digital transformation as one of the ways to lead a sustainable lifestyle. The World Economic Forum estimated that digitalization has the power to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 35%. It is true, considering completing your tasks over the internet emits much less greenhouse gas than traveling to your office.
However, once you examine the resources used for digitalization, you will realize that they are not entirely eco-friendly.
Every time you refresh your Instagram feed or send a message to someone, you contribute to the growing rate of carbon emissions.
According to a BBC report, internet usage accounts for approximately 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions. It indicates that every internet user generates around 414 kilograms or 912 pounds of carbon dioxide yearly.
While the numbers are unsettling, fortunately, there are ways IT companies can reduce their negative impact on the environment. One of those, which we are discussing in today's blog, is sustainable UI/UX design.
Through today's blog, we strive to spread awareness regarding digital sustainability through the lenses of web design. We show how sustainable UI/UX design can create user-friendly and eco-conscious websites and reduce your carbon footprint. We present case studies, methods to measure the carbon footprint of a website, and more.
So, if you have ever been curious about the environmental impact your business website can have or how you can reduce it, read on!
When most people think about industries contributing to carbon emissions, they immediately refer to the manufacturing or transport industries. Rarely do people establish relations between the IT industry and carbon emissions.
However, digital pollution is a growing concern. The IT sector consumes nearly 7% of electricity globally, and the European Union estimates this consumption will reach 13% by 2030.
Hence, there's an urgent need to transition to clean energy and adopt the best eco-conscious digital solutions. Executing eco-friendly UI/UX design plans can be a great way to start.
Here, we discuss the meaning and importance of eco-friendly UI/UX design to help kick-start your environmental efforts.
To grasp the concept of sustainable UI/UX design, you first need to understand what sustainability means.
So, what is sustainability?
Sustainability refers to practices that help us meet the requirements of the present without compromising the future generation's ability to meet their needs. It's a movement that considers the vitality of the environment, the economy, society, or equity, including human beings.
Sustainable practices aim to balance these three factors for a rewarding human experience.
However, how can you incorporate sustainability into your job as a web designer? How does sustainability relate to web development?
The truth is that sustainability is as crucial in digital operations like web design as in any other sector.
In sustainable UI/UX design, environmental sustainability prioritizes saving energy needed to run a system, serve users, and host a website. One way to achieve this goal is to use renewable energy for operations.
Sustainable User Experience and User Interface are about crafting websites and delivering user experiences with minimum negative and maximum positive impacts on the environment, society, and the economy.
Now that you know what green UX design refers to, you may wonder whether going through all these steps is necessary.
If you are looking for short-term benefits, you may overlook the potential of energy-efficient websites. However, green web design practices are critical for attaining long-term sustainable goals.
To give you an example, there are 5.44 billion internet users in the world. The average internet user spends 40% of their waking hours surfing and browsing online. Each user produces approximately 229 kilograms of carbon dioxide during these hours every year.
Even a Google search produces 0.2 grams of CO2. Google receives around 3.5 billion searches daily, producing around 700 million grams of CO2 globally. That is nearly the same amount of CO2 you will make if you drive to the moon seven times.
The only way to reduce this impact of digital services is by adopting digital sustainability practices.
To reduce the environmental impact of your digital products: Sustainable website design practices, such as optimized animations and server-efficient processes, can significantly reduce the energy load of digital applications, decreasing their overall carbon footprint and enhancing user experience.
Every online action and interaction with your website increases energy consumption and carbon footprint.
For instance, when someone checks your company's site, their browser requests an HTTP to the server you use. It asks for information, which your server needs to provide by spending a small amount of energy.
On the other hand, the browser needs power to process the data and allow the visitor to open the website.
Even though this ordeal needs minimal energy, considering the number of internet users and websites worldwide, energy consumption can quickly increase.
It's worth noting that the complexity of your web design and overall website plays a part in this. In fact, the heavier a website, the more energy it consumes to send and process data.
Look at traditional online and web design practices that are significantly contributing to digital pollution:
Hosts store all this information on computers in large data centers. Processing and managing this data requires a lot of energy, which leads to data centers with massive footprints.
You can tackle this issue by opting for lightweight images wherever possible or using alternatives like CSS styles and SVG graphics. You can implement 'lazy loading' strategies and more efficient formats, like JPEG XR, WebP, and HEIF.
Data will get faster and cheaper as more people access the internet, leading to more consumption.
With most businesses still following traditional UI/UX design practices, the internet's growth can devastate Earth's resources.
For example, experts have estimated that the IT industry will account for 20% of all global electricity consumption.
Furthermore, the average website produces 1.76g of CO2 per page view. If an average website garners even 10,000 page views monthly, it could generate 211kg of CO2 yearly.
In addition, the average size of a web page has dramatically increased over the past decade (from 810kb to 2.28MB). However, while data speed is growing, page-load times are not reaching that milestone, increasing websites' energy consumption.
Besides generic business websites, popular platforms like YouTube contribute to digital pollution.
For instance, YouTube generates about 6 billion grams of CO2 daily, while Gmail generates around 1.2 trillion grams of CO2. Conversely, Facebook creates 1.3 billion grams of CO2, whereas text messages generate approximately 261.8 million grams/day.
Integrating sustainable UI/UX design goes far beyond aesthetics. It encompasses creating broad strategies that impact the website's lifecycle and users.
It also involves following some core principles that ensure your digital products or services positively impact the environment without compromising user satisfaction and functionality.
Below, we shed light on the core sustainable design principles to help incorporate them into your digital services.
Sustainable web practices are an approach to designing and developing digital services or products that prioritize the planet and people. It respects the rules of Corporate Digital Responsibility and emphasizes creating an internet that is
Clean: Digital services like green web hosting that uses renewable energy can help you significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from digital services or products. Considering data centers make up about 15% of the internet's overall emissions, it can reduce your carbon footprint and stimulate data transmission.
When following web design best practices for sustainability, starting with the user is vital.
How can you offer a digital experience that is satisfactory for your user and environmentally friendly?
You can start by assessing how users interact with your digital presence, services, or product. You can evaluate their user's journey and use personas to understand their goals.
Once you understand their intent, you can design for sustainability and meet user needs.
Here are a few tips to master user-centered eco-design:
Ethical handling of data and user privacy: Only collect necessary data by respecting users' privacy and reducing file sizes. Also, ensure your website stores data securely and deletes it when you no longer need it.
Accessibility and inclusivity: Environmentally responsible UI/UX should be as accessible and inclusive as any other website design. It should be perceivable, understandable, operable, and robust to everyone, including users with disabilities.
Do you know data centers can gobble up 100 times more energy than an average office building?
Hence, to reduce web carbon emissions, you might want to optimize your website to reduce energy usage. It can help you attain your carbon footprint goals and attract eco-conscious consumers.
Here's how to optimize your website's performance and reduce energy usage
Most assume it's purely technical when discussing eco-friendly UI/UX design or green digital products. However, developing an eco-friendly website starts way before programming its pages. It can begin with the tools you use to design the website or how you decide to power it.
Below, we discuss expert-approved design techniques, tools, and web development practices for promoting sustainability and eco-friendly digital interfaces.
Using unnecessary, large images can largely contribute to the weight of a web page. The more images you use, the larger the files and the more data they need. Hence, think carefully about the photos you use. Do they genuinely offer value to your user? Will they have the same effect if the sizes were smaller?
Here are a few tools you can use to optimize and compress the images used in your website:
Additionally, consider loading images at the correct scale instead of relying on CSS to resize your images. Also, use the best file format for each image, such as opting for WebP instead of JPEG.
Video content is highly effective for engaging users. However, they are likely the most data-sensitive form of content. If adding videos is necessary for your website, consider removing auto-play from videos and keeping the content short.
You can also use tools like Handbrake to compress the videos.
A single font file can add as much as 250kb to your website. If you customize the fonts used on your website, the weight and energy consumption can double.
One way to reduce this weight is to use system fonts, such as Arial or Times New Roman, wherever possible. You will not need to load additional font files to use them. Furthermore, use fewer font variations for climate-conscious user interfaces. Sticking to modern web font file formats (e.g., WOFF and WOFF2) instead of TTF, OFT, and SVG file formats can help compress the fonts used in your web design.
Web Development Best Practices for Sustainability
To reduce your website's carbon footprint, keep your codes clean, write efficient queries, and avoid duplication. This applies to both the codes you write and the existing frameworks you use.
Moreover, if you use a CMS like WordPress, pick plugins that minimize server load instead of unnecessary plugins that add bloat.
Java Script is notorious for adding file weight to web pages and increasing the processing a device requires. It increases CPU usage and energy consumption.
Hence, if you want to develop green digital products, look for alternatives to JS. You can use CSS for functionality, animations, and front-end interactions.
A tool you can use here is Safari. It can help you assess the energy impact of a web page on the end user's device.
Accelerated mobile pages or AMPs load content faster by stripping out unnecessary files and code weights.
AMP can be a useful tool if your website's pages are not as lean as you would like them to be. It will deliver your website's lighter, energy-efficient version to mobile users.
Each time someone tries to load a page; a web server has to work and send back the correct information to the user. It causes the server to consume a large amount of energy.
You can use server caching technology to write web pages as static files in CSS or HTML or use static site generation or a web host to convert your website and reduce energy consumption.
PWA or Progressive Web App Technology allows websites to utilize functionalities you can mostly see in native apps. For instance, your website can cache files on the user's device. As a result, your website won't need to reload the information repeatedly, reducing energy consumption.
Power Usage Efficiency, or PUE, is a metric used to indicate the energy efficiency of data centers. The standard PUE for a data center is around 1.67. High-efficiency data centers usually have a PUE of 1.11. For reference, you can search for data centers run by Google.
The newer versions of PHP use fewer server resources and are faster than its older versions. It can help you build lightweight websites that are responsive and quick to load.
Additionally, experts suggest blocking bots to reduce energy consumption. Believe it or not, bots can often use up to 50% of your website's resources, including processing and bandwidth.
We have listed below UI/UX design sustainable case studies to inspire you and offer practical examples of what can be achieved. Additionally, we have had the privilege of working on these projects and contributing to a greener future.
Here is how we performed sustainable website design and development –
Additionally, we focused on website speed and efficient server utilization to ensure reduced data consumption and supercharged file transfer. The web presence was optimized for multiple devices, especially mobile. If you are planning a sustainable website for your business, consider mobile browsing an energy-efficient pathway compared to desktop and similar.
Eco-conscious website design is an impactful contribution to the global sustainability movement. Working on 8,000+ projects has ensured we play our part in environmental conservation and planet preservation.
You can't manage sustainable web design techniques for your website if you don't know how to measure it.
Luckily, there are several ways to measure a website's carbon footprint, from mathematical formulas to online tools. While the formulas can be complicated, the tools are easy and sometimes free.
Here are a few tools we recommend for measuring the sustainability of your website
Climate-friendly UI design is a holistic approach that emphasizes creating user-friendly interfaces and minimizing environmental impact through careful data usage.
As previously highlighted, efficient UI and UX design could include elements like reducing visual complexity, optimizing user interaction, considering the different aspects of the site, and lowering data consumption.
Besides that, we also recommend –
Adopting agile and lean methodologies: Merging agile and lean methods with your web development process can help prioritize iterative development, user feedback, and waste reduction. You can use Kanban boards, user stories, and retrospectives to enhance and track the function and quality of your website.
Utilizing green coding practices: From using efficient algorithms to avoiding redundant code, a few careful steps during your website's programming can significantly improve its energy consumption rate. Hence, pick a green programming language (e.g., C, C#, Go, and Haskell) and reduce unnecessary dependencies to improve your coding practices.
Optimize resource usage: In addition to using efficient algorithm techniques, executing caching strategies, and minimizing unnecessary queries, you can use cloud services to optimize your website's resource usage. Cloud providers' energy-efficient infrastructure can reduce your product's energy consumption and avoid wastage.
We have come a long way from fighting for sustainability to seamlessly promoting it through digital platforms. In the years to come, we shall observe the following UI/UX design trends as most practiced and celebrated –
Dark-mode website designs reshape the environment by reducing energy consumption across numerous devices. It is one of the practiced sustainability tools utilized by Google, and we have a web design company that adheres to similar practices.
Beyond dark mode websites, we also rely on dark interfaces to reduce battery consumption by up to 60% and contribute to energy preservation.
Sustainable practices, such as faster loading and dark mode implementation, contribute to a positive web experience. They add to the aesthetic appeal, thus reducing users' eye strain. The design practices elevate the comfort and usability of the web presence and attract further traffic.
Sustainable web design practices will extend beyond interfaces and browser modes. Animations and visuals consume a vast chunk of data, and reducing the graphics and unnecessary instances leads to an efficient web presence.
Reduced animations can save up to 20% of battery life and offer an uncompromised experience to the users.
Data is more than a four-letter word and takes up impressive space when transferred digitally. You must understand that even the minute design element is data. However, sustainable design practices focus on optimized data transfer.
Optimization strategies entail progressive web page loading, image optimization, and offline browsability.
Beyond UI/UX design, several other measures will emerge to extend the practice of sustainability. Additionally, device manufacturers will focus on longevity when creating the devices.
Various innovations in the field of technological upgrades and software development will adhere to sustainability practices.
As a business owner, focus on sustainable incorporations for your business website. Rely on a reputed UI/UX web design company with a proven track of sustainable practices.
When you say yes to sustainable websites for your business, you become more than a part of the eco-conscious revolution. As a growing web design and Development Company, we have the bandwidth to create sustainable opportunities. For instance, from simple navigation to intricate web icons, we can practice eco-friendliness as we expand.
As a business owner, you can blend and promote our creation and contribute to this revolution.
Let us come together and create a greener future and deliver exceptional and conscious presence to the masses.
Experience eco-friendly web design practices with Webskitters Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and embrace sustainability. Our team is adept at catering to your ecological needs and delivering the best website design for exceptional turnover and impact.
Atanu Sarkar, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Webskitters Technology Solutions Pvt. Ltd & Webskitters LTD has strong data analytics, business development and entrepreneurship skills. He keeps himself updated about latest technological innovations in his past time and encourages his team to incorporate new technologies and move beyond the defined boundaries of design, development and digital marketing. His inquisitive nature constrains him from flattering any limits and that’s made him a successful entrepreneur, a great leader for his team and a wonderful human being.
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