1. Do UX designers have a role in reducing
digital waste?
Chris Rourke,
November 2021
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UCD Gathering – November 2021 @crourke @uservision

2. A little about me
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Chris Rourke
@crourke , @uservision
chris@uservision.co.uk
• User experience & UCD consultancy
• User research
• Experience design
• Accessibility & inclusive design

3. My goals for our session
This is a discussion session so I’d like to …
• Tell you a bit about digital waste
• Learn if & how you / your team currently considers or controls digital waste
• Present some ideas on reducing digital waste
• Find out if you think they are achievable, how to overcome barriers
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Does that sound OK?

4. Agenda
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„ Digital Waste? What’s the problem?
„ How to measure
„ What can be done?
• Operations
• Products
„ Resources & Next steps

5. Agenda
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„ Digital Waste? What’s the problem?
„ How to measure
„ What can be done?
• Operations
• Products
„ Resources & Next steps

6. Digital waste is the excess negative impact on the natural environment that results from
the production of or consumption of digital products and services.
(my definition – others are available!)
Two main elements:
1. Electronic waste (e-waste) - unrecycled equipment and goes into the ground, water and air,
causing toxic pollution that can last hundreds of years.
2. Data waste - Data that is useless, has no value but produced anyway.
Why is it waste? It is estimated that over 80% of electronics become e-waste and that around 90% of
data is not used again three months after it is first stored.
What is Digital Waste?
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7. Data waste is growing
• The world’s data centres use more electricity than the whole of the United Kingdom - Data
centres now consume about 3 per cent of the global electricity supply and account for about 2
per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions. That gives it the same carbon footprint as the airline
industry.
• If the Internet was a country, it would be the 7th largest polluter with annual emissions similar
to those of Germany
• Communication technology will use 14 percent of global electricity by 2040, up from just under 4
percent in 2020
Source – Sustainable web design
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Source: Sustainable Web Design; Journal of Cleaner Production 2018

8. If the internet was a country….
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Source: Sustainable Web Design;

9. Designers: Who do you design for?
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Me
Organisation
End user
Society ?

10. Poll Question
On your current project, to what degree do you & your team consider & act on the
digital waste impact of the product you are creating?
• Strongly considered
• Considered
• Slightly considered
• Aware but not considered
• Unaware of the issue / not on the radar
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11. Poll Question
Who do you think has responsibility for ‘being green’ in the digital world? Choose 1 or
more.
• Consumer of the data (the end user)
• The producer / creators of the product
• Hosting company hosting the product
• The government (rules & regs)
• All of the above
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12. Agenda
UCD Gathering - October 2020 @crourke @uservision 14
„ Digital Waste? What’s the problem?
„ How to measure
„ What can be done?
• Operations
• Products
„ Resources & Next steps

13. How do you measure the impact?
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The primary goal in sustainable web design is to reduce
carbon emissions.
The primary metrics that could be used as indicators of carbon
emissions are:
• Data transfer
• Carbon intensity of electricity
Kilowatt-hours per gigabyte (kWh/GB) is a metric of energy
efficiency for the amount of data transferred over the internet
Data transfer for a single visit can be most easily estimated by
measuring the page weight, meaning the transfer size of the
page in kilobytes the first time someone visits the page.

14. Web page weight has risen greatly in past 10 years
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Source: www.httparchive.org

15. Page weight / data transfer size
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Page weight budgets can be tracked throughout design
and development. As a proxy measure they indicate the
efficiency relative to other websites.
• From 2017 to 2020, the median size of a web page increased
by roughly 30 percent
• Benchmark page weight against competitors or the old
version of the website
• You can set a maximum page weight budget as equal to your
most efficient competitor, or set the benchmark lower.

16. Poll Question
Does your organisation monitor the page weight of your pages during the design ?
• Yes
• No
• Unsure / maybe
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Could you set a goal, e.g. relative to main competitors in the industry?

17. Check your website’s carbon impact
Has anyone measured their site’s carbon
impact?
https://www.websitecarbon.com/ allows you
to
The average web page tested produces 1.76
grams CO2 per page view. For a website with
10,000 monthly page views, that's 211 kg CO2
per year.
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18. Website Carbon Calculator
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19. Agenda
UCD Gathering - October 2020 @crourke @uservision 21
„ Digital Waste? What’s the problem?
„ How to measure
„ What can be done?
• Operations
• Products
„ Resources & Next steps

20. Sustainable Web Manifesto https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com/
The Sustainable Web Manifesto (SWM) defines sustainable web projects as being clean,
efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient.
Clean - Better to use renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, wave, and hydroelectric to
produce hosting power. Find a host that commits to using 100 percent renewable energy in their
data centres. Is this something you can influence?
Efficient – Developers often copy and paste a whole library of code when we only part of it is
needed, letting old, unnecessary lines clutter up our code.
Open – Openness lets us benchmark & learn from each other, even normalize the concept of
sustainability to make it a part of the conversation in our industry,
Will companies publish the estimated emissions per pageview like BBC Future planet
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21. Sustainable Web Manifesto https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com/
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200131-why-and-how-does-future-planet-count-carbon
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22. Honest – No greenwashing , no
tweaking the numbers
Remember the VW diesel scandal?? If
you’re going to measure & declare, do it
honestly.
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Sustainable Web Manifesto https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com/

23. Regenerative - Redemptive technologies help heal
people and planet. Search engine Ecosia uses profits
from paid advertising to fund reforestation projects.
Resilient - A resilient web is one in which key
information and web services can be accessed on
even the slowest connections, on any device, in
almost any condition—from a moving vehicle to a
natural disaster.
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Sustainable Web Manifesto https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com/

24. Can you be a sustainability champion?
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What if every web project had at least one person who
understands the issues, has some ideas for potential
improvements, and could guide and encourage their
fellow team members to consider sustainability at
every stage of the project?
Would this idea be possible / encouraged in your organisation?

25. Setting your sustainability benchmarks
Setting a sustainability budget
1. Benchmark. Measure the relevant metrics of equivalent web pages e.g. the current version of a
page you’re redesigning, or the equivalent pages on your competitors’ websites.
2. Estimate what’s possible. Estimate the best possible page weight by using your CMS to create a
basic web page using written content but no videos, images, custom web- fonts, or tracking
scripts.
3. Set your page weight budget.
4. Set a stretch goal.
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26. Sustainable design ideas
Implementing a minimalist approach is hard.
• Justify the existence of every detail in the work we produce.
• Don’t ask “Would this be nice to add?” ask “Can we live without it?”
• Avoid ‘Design FOMO’
Justify it not only based on CO2 and environment - think of other benefits to ‘sell in’ the idea
• We create online experiences that load faster
• Easier to access on patchy connections
• Faster to develop
• Offer more streamlined and intuitive user journeys
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27. Design for sustainability and good experience
• Reduce unnecessary page loads with a good IA - structural design, reduce user’s journey
• Avoid ‘gateway pages’ and pogo stick navigation
• Streamline and reduce content
• Lightweight imagery
• Smaller file size (WebP 30% smaller than JPEG)
• Optimise images (Shortpixel, TinyPNG and ImageOptim )
• Image dimensions
• Blur photographs
• Vector imagery
• Choose the right colours
• Optimise video
• Use efficient web typography
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For a good summary
https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/webs
ite-energy-efficiency/

28. Allowing user to go more directly to where they want
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29. Blurred photo edges
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The photo on the right is 47 percent smaller than the one on the left, simply
because the edges are blurred.

30. Making sustainability a feature
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Would your company like to show off its sustainability credentials ?

31. Organic Basics
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Check out
https://lowimpact.organicbasics.com/gbp
Could you have a low impact version of
your site?

32. Sustainable development ideas
There are many things that can be improved ‘under the hood’ of a website
• Can you organise your files to be more streamlined and avoid duplication of styles and functions?
• Can you simplify logic to reduce the number and complexity of queries required to deliver a
specific piece of functionality?
• Can you code the website without using bloated libraries and plugins that contain functionality
you don’t even need?
• Tracking scripts - do you need them ? Does anyone actually use the data?
• Can you compress your code?
• Can you block bots? Bots often use up 50% of resources such as processing and bandwidth.”
Even the language matters: C and C++ are far less energy intensive than Perl, Python, and Ruby.
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33. JavaScript audit
Companies often perform Content Audits where they ask: Why is this content here?
Who is it serving, is it actually used etc
Could you do a similar audit for JavaScript– forensically look at the JS and decide if its needed, used
Very often JS is bloated and unneeded, copied from libraries
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34. Greener web hosting
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The Internet is
accountable for 3.7% of
the world’s carbon
emissions. Enormous
amounts of electricity are
required to run data
transfer centres around
the world.
Credit: SVTeam/Getty

35. Greener web hosting
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Even in the best-case scenario,
data centre energy will rise
massively over the next
decade.
Data centres will use around
3–13% of global electricity in
2030 compared to 1% in 2010”
Source: On Global Electricity Usage of Communication Technology: Trends to 2030. Anders Andrae and Tomas Edler

36. Let’s discuss…
• What are the main barriers to aiming for sustainable web design in your company?
• Do you perform content audits targeted at removing content (which reduces hosting
costs / storage and C02 emissions)?
• Do you think your company could attract / please customers by featuring your efforts
on improving digital sustainability?
• What is the best route to advance this initiative in your organisation? The technical /
dev teams, project Mgt, design teams, Corporate social responsibility?
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37. Poll Question
Do you think changes could be made at your organisation so that designing for reduced
digital waste could be part of the agenda for future digital projects ?
• 1 Highly unlikely
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5 Highly likely
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38. Resources
These can help you start the conversation about sustainability in your digital project
Website carbon Calculator – Check web page carbon footprint https://www.websitecarbon.com/
Green web Foundation – Check if your hosting is green https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/
Sustainable Web Manifesto . https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com/
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Gerry McGovern Tom Greenwood - Whole Grain Digital

39. An evolving topic
As awareness of digital waste grows, so will the imperative to do something about it.
Consider how you can support that effort.
• Please keep in touch with your ideas, questions & suggestions
• User Vision is developing a digital waste audit service based developed in partnership with Gerry
McGovern focusing on :
• Culture
• Devices
• Websites
• Communication
Please get in touch if you’d like to know more
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40. Thank you!
Chris Rourke
UCD Gathering - October 2020 @crourke @uservision 42
chris@uservision.co.uk

41. Slides from Gerry M’s talk – these are extra , for inspiration from a talk by Gerry M in
Sept
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42. Thank you!
Chris Rourke
UCD Gathering - October 2020 @crourke @uservision 52
chris@uservision.co.uk