Sustainable UX: What Is It And How to Build One?

Today the word “sustainability” is widely used to describe processes, resources, and activities.

Humanity avoids the depletion of natural resources to maintain an ecological balance that prevents the poor quality of life in modern society. It has three dimensions: social, economic, and environmental.

This is how sustainable UX is born. Want to know more about it? Keep reading.

What is Sustainable UX? Sustainability + Design

To understand what is sustainable UX or sustainable User Experience, it is essential to understand the concepts before using them. What is sustainability? What is design? How can these two live in harmony?

• Sustainability: “The idea that goods and services should be produced in such a way that irreplaceable resources are not used and the environment is not polluted”; “The ability to stay at a certain level for a certain amount of time.”
• Design: “Create, project, execute or build according to plan”; “It’s a process of imagining and designing objects, interactive systems, buildings, vehicles and more. It’s user-centric.”

Sustainable Design

By combining these two concepts, we get a great idea of ​​sustainable design, a type of design that considers its impact and impact on the environment without just looking at the consumer as a buyer and a profitable business.

It is a project theory that aims to reduce the consumption and surplus of non-renewable resources, reduce waste and create healthy, productive ecosystems.

The user is one, if not an essential factor to consider when creating a product, but we must do better and do a lot more, as well as many other factors like managing stock with the help of WooCommerce show stock quantity.

Sometimes when designing a product, we forget its life after throwing it away, and it turns into sheer trash. So we need to rethink this concept and make it broader and more sophisticated.

There are many creative ways to do this, from subtle environmental announcements to friendly animations and CO2 reduction products. Also, consider developing digital technologies that promote green energy, reduced energy, inclusion, and affordability.

First, you can use animations and illustrations to create reminders of the consumption of environmentally friendly materials and everyday environmental motifs in the app. Second, enable users to learn more about environmental problems and solve them right in your UX project. Finally, you can create a “sustainable environment” for the user of your product.

Sustainability and User Experience

As designers, the projects we work on providing an opportunity to combine pressing global issues with specific provisions and product or service instances.

The boundaries of the project allow us to find tangible solutions to abstract problems. This is not only the case for projects focused on sustainable design. Every project is about sustainability.

If we consider sustainability as a factor in the design phase, the limitations of a particular product give designers the space to develop concrete solutions to abstract problems. It can be applied in product manufacturing and post-processing as well as user experience.

By integrating and shaping sustainable synergies, we can allow consumers to participate actively. We can even expand the definition of what we call the user experience.

For example, although we care a lot about the ‘unpacking experience,’ green design must also consider the ‘re-use experience’ of dismantling a product at the end of its life.

Innovating on User Research Protocol

These traditional things and resources in their current form have undoubtedly lessened their impact on the final design. You could even say that they have now become a commodity.

Even collecting new metrics like Net Promoter Scores and affected project data seemed to have a minimal additional impact. They did not provide an overview of product performance with the new green awareness of Zeitgeist.

As a researcher, I propose to start research in addition to the traditional data used, online advertisers or affected data, and to include data based on environmentally friendly consumption. 

This is an essential indicator of the user’s purchasing decisions and will continue to grow in the coming years. In the end, I realized that in a weak economy, users need value for money. 

Cell phone package cost aside; users are frustrated that they face problems such as non-payment or are Environment-Friendly easily destroyed after purchasing a cell phone. 

Those were the fundamental problems of the day. It doesn’t matter if it took three or four steps to open the music player or if the user wanted to swipe right or down to access the app.

The member I noticed was a 22-year-old user from South Asia who said that the preference for his mobile phones belonged to a company that respects the environment.

He noticed that many of these “useless” phones ended up in the part of the world where his parents were growing up. 

He was also impressed that his Nokia phone contained recycling and other information that showed his commitment to sustainability. But, first, other mobile phone companies would not have the option if products were not built for more than five months.

The feeling that the products should last a long time came up in many more interactions, and I figured out how to deal with it.

I realized that this solution is a solution that designers can little add to and that user research can consider their realities. This is in fact, one of the fundamentals of sustainable UX.

Conscious Creations

One of the biggest challenges facing a single planetary society is the amount of waste generated. An estimated 3.5 million tonnes of plastic and other solid waste are estimated every day.

For this reason, it’s essential to start creating not only to sell or excite your audience but also to remember the impact each type of product can have in the course of its life.

Durability

Many products are discarded due to insufficient storage time. That’s why we have to buy the same items repeatedly or buy many of them because we know they won’t last long.

This is, of course, an opportunity for brands to sell more, and some of them are consciously using this “buy-back tactic” to attract users to their products and publications.

However, to be responsible, informed, and reverse wasteful trends, we need to start developing durable products that users/consumers can trust.

Resources

The resources used to produce them are among the most critical factors in reducing waste and creating more sustainable products and solutions. Therefore, we must invest in greener materials and try to avoid using plastics where possible.

Let’s never forget that our role as designers is to give people the best experience and products in general, not just the short amount of time they spend.

Environment-Friendly Solutions

It isn’t easy to talk about sustainability, much less the environment, because one of the key factors in sustainability is the health of our planet and the security of future generations who live it.

All over the world, we see more and more creative solutions, such as product development, that breathe new life into other products or materials that are already in use.

The cost of production and distribution may be higher, but consumers appreciate the effort and consideration involved and are willing to support the brand over the long term.

Changes occur in fashion, architecture, the Internet, products, home design, or otherwise, and we need to be involved.

If you are interested in web design and development services, we can help you. Contact us now or visit our services page to learn more.